Having Emerald back changed a few things in Dyna’s life. Training sessions were rougher. More intense. Dyna had no idea how she would have kept up were it not for the multitude of gadgets that she was cycling through. Before Emerald left for Korea, she had participated in training. At the time, she must have been going easy.
Either that or she was especially upset about taking a paintball to the face. It was hard to tell. Emerald almost perpetually had a serene smile on.
Ruby acted differently as well. Although she pretended otherwise, she was clearly happy to have Emerald around. Normally, Ruby didn’t like anyone barging into movie nights. Not November, not Matt, and certainly not Hematite. She tolerated Mel, but likely only because Mel didn’t stick around to watch movies for long before heading off to do her own thing.
Then Dyna went out to invite Emerald along for a movie, only to find out that Ruby had already done so.
The little things aside, however, the biggest change was a strange undercurrent of tension that followed Emerald around. It wasn’t directed at the Carroll Institute or anyone inside it. Emerald wasn’t angry with anyone or ready to start a fight over nothing. She was just… ready. Every moment of every day, she was ready for the call that the institute had narrowed down a base of operations for Ignotus-33. It was inspiring in a way. And a bit frustrating.
Dyna had her own beef with the group. If word came in about Ignotus and Emerald vanished to go handle it before Dyna could even grab her jacket…
Well, perhaps Emerald’s constant state of readiness had been rubbing off on Dyna.
Dyna sat at the large table of the artificer ready-room wearing combat boots, a combat knife, two pistols, and a few pouches attached to her belt that contained a small first-aid kit, a pair of spare magazines, ballistic glasses, ear protection, and, most importantly, a few of her gadgets. She never used to sit around armed to the teeth. Especially not within the Carroll Institute where she hadn’t even carried a gun for self-defense purposes.
Now, she wanted to be ready to go at any moment.
Tossing an oil-covered rag to the side, Dyna quickly reassembled her APC9K submachine gun. The actual gun, not a paint pellet variant for training. Following cleaning and maintenance, she placed it into its small carrying case. That was ready as well.
Now if only it was easier to carry around. Encumbrance, Dyna had decided, was quickly becoming a problem. Emerald could leave her gear wherever and, thanks to her ability to stop time, gather it up effectively instantly. So far, Dyna couldn’t say the same.
Though not for a lack of trying.
While cleaning her guns, she had kept the rest of the table covered with a plethora of items. A dozen timepieces, pocket watches, wristwatches, one mantle clock, and even a cuckoo clock. On the other half of the table, a series of bags, boxes, containers, and other storage-themed objects were arrayed out.
Making new gadgets, Dyna discovered, was something of a hit-or-miss affair. No matter how much she sat and stared at something, there wasn’t a guarantee that it would demonstrate any anomalous activity. So gathering a large number of similar items increased the chance that she could turn one of them into something special. For the clock-like items, Dyna didn’t know if she would be able to craft an ability to completely stop time as Emerald did. Manipulating time felt like an incredibly powerful ability to have, which was why she was trying to get anything working, and yet, seemed a bit out of scope compared to other gadgets she had created. The laser pointer, which made bullets from the attached gun hit so long as she had aimed it at her target at some point in the immediate past, seemed closest and it still wasn’t quite there.
The containers, on the other hand, came from a concept described by Matt of a ‘bag of holding’. A container that was basically larger on the inside than it was on the outside that would hopefully weigh no more than the container itself. Dyna didn’t know if that was achievable, but also didn’t know that it wasn’t achievable. Artifacts, and her gadgets, did a great many strange things. The concept sounded too good to simply ignore.
At least she didn’t feel too much of a need to sneak around behind the institute’s back. There were no objections to the creation of gadgets, or artifacts if Dyna could manage, but they were limiting the number she could carry at once. Security reasons. They didn’t want a hundred items falling into enemy hands if something unfortunate happened. Dyna had to write a full report on every object she created, detailing everything she figured out from using it, as well as submitting it to Doctor Cross for further testing and analysis. Following that, she had to file innumerable forms justifying why she should be able to carry around that particular item. Even then, a few requests had still been denied.
The most common cause of denial was a simple phrase. ‘Usable by many.’ If something she created was only for Dyna, it presented far less of a security risk than something anyone could pick up and make use of.
Emerald entered the artificer ready-room. Dyna perked up. She had been hoping to see the other woman today. Dyna hadn’t really thought of creating something that manipulated time before her return, but now that she was back…
“Dyna,” Emerald said, tone pleasant as always. “Or I suppose we should all be calling you Onyx now.”
“Eh…”
“Don’t like it?”
“I mean, it just feels a little weird. It’s fine. I’m sure I’ll get used to…” Dyna trailed off as Emerald ducked back into the hall and wheeled in a large cart. Papers were stacked on top of it, reaching almost from Emerald’s chest to the top of her head. Below the stack of papers, on shelves set into the cart, a Emerald had a variety of foods and drinks. A lot of meal-replacement style drinks, but some solid food as well. A good amount of snack-foods such as M&Ms, potato chips, and hard candy.
“I took to Emerald quite well,” she said, moving the cart right up to the adjacent table. Her eyes danced over the array of items in front of Dyna, but didn’t comment. Instead, she said, “To be honest, I think we ought to be able to pick our own names. Not code names, but actual names. Why does a little sex give parents the right to call their child Dorcas? Honestly, should be illegal. No one, let alone a little girl, wants to be named Dorcas.” Emerald shook her head. Then, after pulling her pocket watch out of her pocket, reached under the top shelf of the cart. Emerald, athletic and strong, was still having trouble with the clearly heavy cart. Yet she lifted it a smidgen off the ground and…
Dyna blinked.
There were papers scattered across the adjacent table. Wrappers and empty cans and bottles littered the area. Emerald wasn’t where she had just been standing, but over at the door leading to the bathrooms. She slipped through before Dyna could say anything.
Leaning over, Dyna stared at the nearest document. It was a typed report of suspected Ignotus-33 activity in Canada. Alongside the printed text, several lines had been highlighted with a variety of colors and annotations had been penned into the margins in Emerald’s handwriting.
Emerald returned in short order, stepping over to the cart once again.
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“Is that your real name?” Dyna asked. “Dorcas?”
“Who told you that?” Emerald said with a mild start.
“You did. Just…” Dyna glanced over the cart again. The stack of papers had disappeared by about half. A good portion of the food was missing too. And there was a blanket and pillow on the very bottom shelf that looked different than it had before. Like it had been unfurled and replaced.
How long had Emerald been in stopped time for?
“Right. I remember, sorry. Mind is a bit full of this Ignotus group at the moment.” Emerald paused, taking a half-empty energy drink from her tray and chugging it. She finished it in an instant and tossed it over her shoulder where it landed in a small trash bin along with several other pieces of trash that Dyna didn’t remember being there a moment ago. “Speaking of groups, did Tartarus ever respond to you?”
Dyna frowned at the reminder, shaking her head. “I don’t get it. Why say that they need to talk and then just not talk?”
“Could be something happened,” Emerald said with a casual shrug, rolling her neck and popping it a few times. “Ignotus is after psionic-related personnel, items, and information. Tartarus would have been a target. Something to think about, but if you’ll excuse me for an instant…”
With half the cart emptied, Emerald had far less difficulty lifting it off the ground this time around.
Once again, the scene shifted. The items on the cart reappeared elsewhere in the room. Papers now occupied three full tables and the trash had multiplied. Emerald looked a somewhat haggard, her hair a bit oilier than usual and her cardigan wrinkled and unkempt. But she had a smile on her face.
“Phew. Finished.”
“Finished?”
“Every report the institute had on Ignotus-33, spatial anomalies, and tulpa,” she said, sweeping her hand across the room. Her eyes flicked up to a clock on the wall. “Read and commented on every piece in about five minutes. Not bad.”
Dyna glanced back down at the paper she had just been looking at. Even more scribbles covered it. Little numbers pointing out references to other documents, a few extra comments about Canadian psionic capabilities, and more highlighting of various text.
Every piece of paper was the same throughout the room. She couldn’t read the text without moving around, but she could see the handwritten notes and colorful lines of the highlighters used. There had to be a few hundred, maybe even a few thousand papers about the room. Some stacked up, but most scattered across the tables.
Shelving her irritation with Tartarus for the moment—if they were in trouble, surely they could have sent more than one message—Dyna focused on the situation in front of her. “That is the most intense study session I’ve ever seen,” she said slowly, wondering if that counted as a compliment. “Do you even retain all that information? I’d forget everything immediately.”
“Oh I doubt I remember every bit. The important parts, sure. While I did this to get fully caught up on the situation, I also plan to feed all this into Beatrice’s OCR machine to let her analyze my comments.”
“Did you figure out anything? A base of operations or—”
“That kind of stuff I’ll leave to Beatrice. Like I said, I really just needed to catch up fully on the situation.”
“Wow.”
Dyna didn’t know what else to say. That ability…
It was a good thing Emerald had it. Dyna felt she had drive and motivation, but the dedication to sit around and read thousands of dry, monotonous reports for… hours? Days? Longer? Emerald was definitely cut from a different cloth.
Speaking of abilities, Emerald was looking at the items on Dyna’s table.
“It’s how I make gadgets,” Dyna answered the unasked question. “The best way I’ve found so far.”
“I was going to ask,” Emerald said. “Kept getting distracted wondering what you were doing. Gadgets are like fake artifacts?”
Shoving aside the sudden idea that Dyna had been standing stock still, staring at Emerald’s papers for days on end, Dyna walked back over. “Kind of. Two, including my mirror, have become actual artifacts since I created them. Doctor Cross refers to them as nascent artifacts.”
“Trying to do something with time and… space?” Emerald asked, looking from the group of clocks to the containers.
“Not together,” Dyna said before pausing to think. “Maybe? Probably. If one object can do two things, then I’m all for it, but no. These are two separate attempts at making things.”
“I would say that time and space are one and the same, but they really aren’t for me.”
“Any of them stand out to you? Maybe smell different or just seem like they don’t quite fit in with the rest?” That was the main reason Dyna had been hoping to see Emerald today. Well, that and to get her to use her ability, but she had been doing that without needing to be asked.
Emerald didn’t answer the question right away. Humming, she started walking around the table. She leaned down close, eyes moving over each item in turn. Although she tried to keep her occasional sniffs subtle, she didn’t quite manage to hide them completely.
When she reached out to touch the old Russian komandirskie watch, Dyna grabbed her hand.
“Sorry. Just, uh, try not to touch them. Ruby has had to go through the decoupling process three times now.”
“Can’t help herself?”
“To be fair, the first time, we didn’t know exactly what would happen. Given the unique nature of her… well, her, the doctors rushed her into the decoupling chamber as fast as they could once we realized what happened. They didn’t want any artifact interference to mess with the gemstone.”
“That would be understandable except she went through two more times?”
“Something about the doctors not knowing what is best for her,” Dyna said with a sigh. “Unfortunately, it also kind of messes with the gadget. Makes them harder for me to use. She’s banned from coming within five feet of any gadgets now.”
With a small, knowing chuckle, Emerald kept her distance and pointed to the komandirskie watch. A fairly standard winding watch brass bars in place of numbers, a day counter, and a red star at the twelve position. “This,” Emerald said, pointing without touching, “is running sixty percent slower than it should be. Could be a manufacturing defect, or…”
Picking up the watch, Dyna stared down at the second hand as it ticked around the face. Holding it next to one of the other watches on the table, she had to agree. It was definitely slower than normal. Had it always done that? Honestly, Dyna hadn’t really thought to check.
“You noticed it that quickly, huh?” Dyna said, looking up. Even side by side, she still probably wouldn’t have noticed. None of the clocks were set to the same time, so it wasn’t like one had obviously gotten out of synchronization with the others.
“I know time,” Emerald said with a smile.
“I’ll have to focus on this one for a bit then,” Dyna said, placing it on her wrist and doing the strap up. It didn’t exactly look good. Nobody actually used watches these days. Not unless they were smart watches. If she were being honest, she could hardly believe standard watches were still being made.
Yet, every year, it seemed like she heard about some new high precision watch with moon phase dials and a complete orrery of the solar system or some watch designed to look like a combustion engine for some inconceivable reason.
But if it let her stop time, she would strap an engine to her wrist any day of the week.
Tapping the winding stem didn’t seem to do anything, unfortunately. In order to wind or set the clock, one had to unscrew the stem, then they could either wind it by twisting in the opposite direction or pull it out a bit further to set the time. No real button. The bezel of the watch had seconds in tens around the brass edges of the watch, but it could also rotate.
Twisting the bezel made Dyna jolt.
“This,” Emerald said, pointing without touching, “is running sixty percent slower than it should be. Could be a manufacturing defect, or…”
Dyna’s wide eyes snapped from her bare wrist to the table where Emerald was pointing at the Russian watch.
“Something wrong?”
Ignoring Emerald for the moment, Dyna grabbed the watch and put it on her wrist. What had she done? She had tried to wind it first, and that had done nothing. Then she twisted the bezel. She had made it about three quarters of the way around before it felt like it had been ripped out from under her fingertips.
Dyna twisted the bezel again, only to feel it ripped out of her grip before she got a tenth of the way around.
“This,” Emerald said, pointing without touching, “is running sixty percent slower than it should be. Could be—”
“I don’t think it is a manufacturing defect,” Dyna said, picking up the watch much slower this time.
Emerald raised a quizzical eyebrow. “How did you—” she started, but cut herself off some comprehension dawned. “Precognition upon touching the watch?”
“No. Time travel, maybe? Except there is obviously only one of me, so maybe just threw my thoughts backwards? Which I guess is just functional precognition… but… I… I think I need to go talk to Doctor Cross right now.”
Emerald smiled, completely unperturbed by the implications. “I was going to ask your help in collecting all these papers,” she said with a slight sigh. “Oh well. Have fun then. Hopefully my notes will help Beatrice narrow down on Ignotus.”
Dyna nodded her head absently before Emerald’s words caught up to her. Then she nodded a little more seriously. “Yes. But… I want to go too. Don’t run off without me.”
“Of course.”
Promise extracted, Dyna left the assortment of items behind, only picking up the case that held her APC9K as she left the room. The others would still be there when she got back.
Unless Ruby got into them.
Oh well. If Ruby wanted to go through decoupling again, she was welcome to. Dyna had a new gadget to experiment with.