Yes phone, I know you are ringing with a call for the third time this morning, I still can’t move though.
This sucks, it really does.
It started on the fourth ring when I heard a knock on the door. “Hey Sam, I’m coming in to check your phone.” River said quietly after it opened with a creak a moment later.
Dang, I hope it didn’t wake them but I was immensely grateful they were here as I doubt someone would be trying to get me for this long without no reason. I did a ding in response to acknowledged them, hopefully they would take that as a ok to come in.
“Oh good you’re awake.” They said as they passed me to get to the phone, there was a pause as they looked at it. “Its Molly, I’m going to answer it and put it on speaker.”
Ding
“Hi Molly, Sam can’t respond yet, she can hear you though.” They placed the phone down on the bed near me from the sounds of things, but without being fully spun up I couldn’t really tell where.
Thanks River, you’re the best.
“I won’t bother asking for privacy, but this is on the quiet ok River?” I heard Molly respond.
“sure.”
“Sam, I need you here as soon as you can. There’s been another attack, this time in Guelph.” River gasped, I was of course unable to express anything besides cursing internally and a ding to acknowledge what she said.
“Oh hey I heard that.” She commented a bit surprised before continuing “I have a situation meeting that I’m already late for, I will update you with anything I learn when you get here.” She paused for a second. “Bye you two, sorry I had to call.”
“That’s OK, it’s important.” River said. “Bye Molly.” The phone clicked, and it sounded like River picked it up to move it to my desk. “I’m going to get a breakfast ready for you and pack lunch just in case, sorry I can’t really do more than that.”
That’s more than I could ask for.
----------------------------------------
“Hey, sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.” Molly glanced up from packing what I assumed was my messenger bag with stuff from a box as I entered the office. She had slacks and a white dress shirt on like I’d seen her wear in that article, the otherwise professional get up somewhat undone by her usual beanie still in its place over her hair. Admittedly a few strands escaping it were drifting unusually as a reminder of why she did.
“No problem, I’ve seen you wake up.” She answered a bit distracted. “You cool with going on a ride to Guelph?”
“Sure, but am I ready for that?” I asked while hanging my backpack in my cubby.
“Well, probably not but I trust you won’t do anything wrong.” She said then flashed me a grin. “Hands-on experience is great for learning.” She shuffled stuff around in the box for a moment before continuing a bit more serious. “We aren’t going there for much more than showing our faces and talking to some local cops anyway.” She sighed while putting a couple of more items in the messenger bag before picking it up. “While I doubt anything dramatic will happen it’s not exactly my original plan for our first outing.”
“Well, here’s your ready bag all packed, the main stuff you needed got here in time for this at least.” She said while puting the bag in my spot, giving me an opportunity for a look inside. It seemed to be filled with all sorts of stuff, a first aid kit, a box of bags of some kind, lights, small tools, some human snacks, and that was just what I saw at a glance.
“We never really know what we need, so hence just having a bit of everything, it’s kinda over packed for most people. I usually just keep mine close to hand in the car, but you probably won’t have any issues with it.” She explained while looking in the box before tossing another couple of items to me, they turned out to be my shoulder holster and a badge in its holder
“Woah, already?” I asked, looking at them incredulously.
“Your guns got released to us which means you can go fully kitted, we are treating this as this is a response incident rather than a public relations thing. As for the badge it backs up that you are allowed to be armed.” She said while heading towards the weapons locker. “Come on, I’ll give you the code.”
I took a moment to pull the holster on, then looked down at how it pulled my shirt over me. Huh, it did make my boobs look bigger. Neat.
Once she had the locker open it revealed a space where the left-hand side was a few racks the height of the locker, currently only occupied by a pair of C8s along with my C15, but there was space for maybe half a dozen more full-length rifles. The other side was mostly shelves other than a rack designed to hold five pistols at about mid-chest height for Molly, at the moment two of the cradles were filled. The rest of the shelving was either bare or held containers of ammo or magazines.
“Just the pistols, we aren’t going that loaded.” She said reaching to take the leftmost one. “They are labeled to us individually for ballistics evidence reasons, so check here.” She tapped a little area on the slide, before placing it in her holster. I followed her lead in taking mine, I looked at it maybe a moment too long from the way she paused beside me before I shoved it in my holster.
“I loaded us each a couple of mags already.” She explained while pulling the four magazines off an otherwise empty shelf and offered two to me. After placing one in its pouch on her waist she then loaded the other into her pistol, although I noted that she left it decocked and with an empty chamber. “Grab anything you need from your backpack and let’s go; I will give you the deets during the drive.”
It was weird to have both a holster and something in it, a fact I was reminded of when I heard the occasional noises as I tapped it while I followed her to the car.
“Hey Molly, is there an expected uniform or something I should have worn?” I asked glancing down at my knee-length purple skirt and white sleeveless shirt as we walked through the halls. “I wasn’t sure what I should wear when I was getting ready.”
“Nah, I just do this get up because people expect someone serious, and it helps reassure people that I’m not just some random dipshit off the street.” She said with a chuckle. “You’re dramatic enough that I doubt people would make that mistake anyway, so I wouldn’t worry.”
When we got to the parking garage, we took a different route than where she usually parked her own car, she instead brought us to a white ‘Government of Canada’ and ‘Clash Resolution Department’ marked car in amongst a collection of other similarly marked vehicles. It was probably the same one as I had seen her leaning against in the photo, a big sedan of the same type as the local police force used. if I didn’t miss my guess, it was probably just a white version of one of those as it even had the light rack up top and bull bar. Although the lights didn’t have any tint to them, so I had no idea what colour they would be if they turned on.
There were a few other CRD vehicles in this section of the garage, but the other two cars were less imposing, they were just a couple of hybrid commuter boxes from a few years ago. There was a massive pickup with a huge square box that almost looked armored though, but I didn’t have time to stand and gawk so I hurried to catch up with Molly as she was already getting her seatbelt on.
“Alright so here’s the little bit we know.” She said once we were out into the city. “Man with fish fins for hair gets nabbed at eleven PM last night from his ground floor apartment, turns up dead and dry as a bone six AM today.”
“The cops said they might have a lead on one of the mercs as his face was caught on camera, but they didn’t have a name when they passed that info along earlier.” She paused to make a turn before continuing. “Neither of us are forensics experts but the cops have them on-site already and they said they might have something for us from the scene.”
“That’s really about it, I can spout a bunch of other details but really they are just nitty-gritty bullshit.” I nodded, and the quiet stretched for a few moments before dhe sighed. “I don’t expect us to be gone the whole day but sorry for making you miss any classes.”
“It’s fine, I just have web dev and a tutorial in the afternoon.” I said waving her off. “I won’t miss too much and I share that class with Jake anyway so I can get anything important from him.”
“Rad, I was going to be writing a midterm right now, but the prof hadn’t covered everything, so it got kicked to next week.” She said with the hint of a smile after doing a lane change.
“What would have happened if it hadn’t moved?”
“Summers would send a notice to the university and I would write it at another time or something. He’s done it a couple of times for me already.” She said with a shrug. “I guess he has enough sway to get away with that.”
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“Huh, that’s convenient.”
“Yeah, I definitely appreciate it.” She agreed.
The remaining thirty minutes of the drive was about the quietest I’d seen Molly, she would respond to questions but there was none of the usual small talk I had grown to expect from her.
The apartment we eventually arrived at was one of those ones that are three stories of basic red brick without any real attempt at styling. There were balconies on each floor with beige painted metal fencing on either side of the central glass window that would attempt to illuminate the stairwell that ended in a glass and metal door that probably was original to whenever the structure was built. A row of evergreen bushes across the front of the building interrupted by the doorway was its sole nod towards aesthetics, but that only managed to make it more depressing. The right-hand ground floor unit was visibly damaged, the glass smashed out of the sliding doors and the bushes trampled. The place was crawling with cops but one waved us through so we could park on the street amongst their vehicles.
“Alright, let me start this off. Bring your bag and keep your badge ready.” She instructed while unbuckling her seat belt and getting out of the car. I followed her as she came around the hood, the cops were wary when saw we were armed, and I saw a few hands go to pistols. My brain immediately locked them as potential threats and I felt an urge to go for mine, it wasn’t strong enough to make me do anything and it’s not like that would have made anything better. Plus, I could probably still draw faster than them in the worst case.
“Ease up.” Molly said quietly. “The way you are looking at them is scaring the crap out of them.”
“Sorry?” I said surprised.
“Tell you later.” She said as someone stepped forward, and Molly suddenly had her badge up. “Hello I’m Agent Scott from CRD, this is Agent Woodward, and we’re here about the abduction. I’m told you would be expecting us?”
Following her lead, I pulled my badge from the messenger bag’s front pocket. I was nowhere near as smooth at the action, but the guy glanced at it anyway.
“That’s right. I’m Inspector Carlson.“ He said slightly less than comfortable and occasionally glancing at me. “I can give you what we do have since a few hours ago. First of all, we have an object we will need to hand over for evaluation.”
“Oh?” Molly said conversationally but her face hardened a bit.
“We haven’t touched it just in case, but we are assuming it’s related to why they were able to break in and subdue the victim without the neighbors being alerted.” He said settling into the conversation while focusing on Molly. The other officers had started to relax, and my brain lowered its threat consideration of them. “It’s just over there.”
He brought us to one of the trampled bushes before using a pen to pull a branch out of the way.
“Fuck. I know that one.” Molly commented while crouching down to get a closer look. “Temporarily obscures an area with an audio-visual hologram of its state at the time it was placed. Should last maybe twenty minutes for a simple hologram, single-use, or at least no one has figured out how to charge them.”
I looked at her surprised she knew that much about it, she looked away for a moment to meet my gaze for a second. “Here’s the problem with them.” She continued presumably to answer my unspoken question. “There are exactly four left on the planet, and they are all sitting in the box I found them in back at the facility. The other two got burned up learning about them or trying to figure out how they worked.”
“I guess that confirms one reason they are nabbing people then, getting more equipment.” I commented dryly, to which she nodded.
“I was worried about something like this when we were told he was snatched from home. The others were when they were out and easy to grab, I expect it’s new they have this stuff.” She said while rubbing her chin. “Sam, could you give me one of the artifact bags? Main pouch, the box next to the first aid kit.”
A quick look in the bag where she had indicated and I had one of the thick and rubbery black bags, which I passed to her. I think I might have seen them on desks in the Artifact Engineering room, but I wasn’t sure. She did the classic pick-up dog poop trick of inverting the bag and then picking up the artifact without touching it.
“Shouldn’t be an issue to hold it, but may as well follow procedure.” She commented to me, then turned back to Inspector Carlson. “Thank you, is there anything else you have for us?”
“I can get you a name for one of the perpetrators.” He said. “Otherwise, it’s going to be a while before we have anything else, we don’t have much to go on and there weren’t any witnesses that have come forward.”
“That’s more than we have right now, show us please.” He didn’t look used to being all but ordered around, but after a glance at me, he nodded and led us to the big box of a command vehicle nearby.
“Finnegan Mcclure, American born, ex-marines, spent a while in Iraq as a PMC back when the Americans were still there, last known to be retired in Manitoba.” The officer with a laptop that Inspector Carlson brought us to said, his screen a somewhat grainy picture of the individual looking toward the camera in the middle of turning along with a document that the officer was reading off. “Only reason we have him is that the victim had a camera watching his three-dee printer the suspects didn’t see.” The guy’s pronunciation almost made me chuckle.
“Perfect, that gives us something, one second.” Molly said already having pulled her phone out before firing off a quick text. “Ok, we can leverage some contacts on this one, if we get something I’ll pass it along.”
Officer Carlson was taken aback, but after glancing at the other officer didn’t press. “We have a description of the victim, but would you mind giving us what clash he changed in.” Molly asked rolling over their hesitation.
“The fifteenth of last June.” The officer at the laptop reported after a few moments of looking through documents.
“Thanks.” Molly said thumbs already moving on her phone. “Anything on anyone else?”
“Not from our end, we are in the dark on this still. We believe there were between two and four involved in the actual grab from the footprints but we aren’t certain yet”
“Four including the driver I would expect.” I commented while reading the page on the suspect that had been brought up on screen again, it was mostly service records or similarly incomprehensible to me government documents.
“What makes you think that?” He asked.
“Personal experience.” I said wryly causing both officers to stare at me.
“Well, if you don’t have anything else at the moment, let’s get out of your hair.” Molly said before he could respond, turning and hopping out the back of the vehicle. “Come on Sam, we are headed to where they dumped the body next.”
“Uh, bye.” I called back, as I rushed a bit to catch her. “I am guessing their body isn’t there anymore?”
“Fucking better not be, the family deserves better than that.” She said as we reached the car, as we got in she changed the subject. “See what I mean by just showing our faces?”
“I don’t know shit about investigation, I want what they can give me, and then we’re gone. If there was someone in our jurisdiction in custody, I might have spent the next two hours negotiating or getting Summers to go over them though.” She explained as we pulled away. “In some ways portraying ourselves as hot shit movie-style FBI wannabes has its advantages, it unsettles them in a way that gets the info with the least beating around the bush.”
She then laughed for a moment when we stopped at an intersection just up the street. “Fuck, I don’t think it unsettled them near as much as you did just walking up to them though.”
“I’m not really sure what I did to do that.” I said sheepishly.
“You don’t? Buddy, you were snapping your eyes between those cops like you were considering which to eat first.” She started still chuckling. “Plus, every time one of them so much as twitched near their gun you focused on them.”
“Oh, sorry, it’s not really intentional.” I mumbled looking away.
“Hey I don’t mind, pretty sure it made that guy cut the bullshit because most of the time these people spend like twenty minutes trying to find out if I have the authority to get anything out of them. Technically, they are supposed to give us anything relevant to clashes, but usually they still think they outrank us and try to swing their weight a bit.”
“As it turns out, tiny scary robot girls with guns really back up your claims of power.” She finished and then cackled for a bit when I steamed up.
A few minutes later she glanced at the dashboard clock after we had gotten onto the main road. “We might make it back for your lecture, depending on how long we spend in Elora.” She commented. “it’s on the way back after all.”
When we stopped next, it was at just another anonymous ditch next to a field about ten minutes out from Elora. There was a cruiser and an officer standing waiting for us, but we didn’t get much out of them besides when the individual was confirmed dead. We stood for a few minutes standing looking down at the disturbed mud where the body was unceremoniously dumped, I don’t know what Molly was thinking but Roger’s screams echoed in my head.
The ride back was occupied with grim silence, only broken by the sounds of the car and my internals.
----------------------------------
I was returning the last round from the magazine I was emptying into its box when a thought crossed my mind. “Hey Molly, have they done any repeat attacks on people from the same clash yet?”
“No, not that I know of.” She said looking up from her laptop. ‘Why?”
“I was wondering if I was on their list still is all.”
“Mmm, we suspect not. If they already got ‘fuel’ from a dimension they don’t need to again, particularly against a… difficult target like yourself.” She said before looking back down and continuing to type a report on what we had seen.
“True.” I closed the locker and glanced at my phone where it was sitting on the table to check the time. “Unless we have something else we can do, I may as well go to my lecture.”
“You down to train tonight or tomorrow? I would really like to get you ready ASAP” She asked looking up again.
“I could do some of tonight, but I have a midterm to study for and a visit to Anna’s scheduled tomorrow night.”
“M’kay.” She flopped back in her chair. “Fuck I hate this waiting; I want to demand you be here instead but there’s no point if we can’t even anticipate them. I don’t even know shit about using what little we got, so I just gotta hope Wilson’s team can do something with the name and the victim’s info we got today.” She finished with a sigh as I pulled my backpack on.
“I’m not against training instead of studying but I just told my parents last night that I wouldn’t mess up my degree sooooo.” I said stretching the word. ”I at least need to try to get enough of the schoolwork done.”
She laughed. “I supposed I have school work too, now get outta here before you’re late.”
----------------------------------------
Buzz Buzz
Jake and I were almost halfway into Thursday’s web dev lecture when my phone announced a message and discord’s icon got a red dot on my desktop, it was from Molly.
Ex4ctPlac3: Yo check your email
Ex4ctPlac3: You on campus?
Ex4ctPlac3: I can drive
IndustrialCat: What?
IndustrialCat: One sec
Flipping over to the work email I found a succinct email from Summers.
CONFIDENTIAL
Immediate summons for field agents and Colonel Brant, we have a time-sensitive opportunity.
Finnegan Mcclure has been captured and revealed the location of a handover in 3 hours.
Summers
Oh shit.
“Jake, I have to go. Let me know what I miss.” I said while shutting the laptop and tossing it in my bag in a rush.
“What?”
“Bond shit.” I said distractedly as I got up to leave, my attention on my phone while I coordinated with Molly.