The rest of the SWAT team had quickly left, trying to follow either of the two ecoterrorists. After I got a tentative all clear from their medic, Brent pulled both myself and Danny back into the conference room.
“Congratulations on starting an arms race with a terrorist,” Brent told me in a disapproving tone. “I hope whatever you got out of it was worth it.”
“Bu—Wait, an arms race?”
“You’ve proven you aren’t able to, or at least won’t, hurt Barry enough to stop him. And he’s seen he actually is at least semi-bulletproof,” Brent reminded me. “So now he’s likely to attempt to get even stronger and since you don’t know how his method works, there’s no telling his timeframe.”
I winced. “Then I need to get stronger too, right?”
“And that’s the arms race. Can you get stronger? Will you be willing to stop him before conventional methods are completely unable to stop either of you?” Brent sighed and looked between Danny and me. “So, right now you’ve got approximately two choices. Choice one involves moving to Fort Leonard Wood and leaving a group of people to run this facility, similar to when you moved out of the school as your primary location. Danny, you could even stay behind as the primary facilitator here if you really wanted to.”
“And the other option is to secure this place?” Danny asked.
“No, we’re past being able to do that now.” Brent shook his head. “We’re too close to the strip mall to close off this building well enough, Nicole is too easily accessible with the fact that you’re now being targeted by terrorists. No, option two is to pick another military base and move everything there. I know that would be more of a burden to everyone, considering the work you’re doing with some of the people that live here.”
“Is it really that bad?” I asked. Wasn’t that going a little overboard?
“Nicole, the results of your fight out there are going to rewrite ten thousand different rules of engagement as soon as I report it. The military is going to have to figure out how to tell the strength of someone, which is going to require people at that level, or at least trained to that. The Secret Service will suddenly need people who can do the same. You said Barry had a technique that made him that bulletproof? If he can teach that, do you realize the number of people that literally will be able to walk through current security procedures and do whatever they want?” Brent paused his rant. “Fuck, I need to call this in now. I wonder if Whiteman has any drone bombers…” he muttered as he got up and walked into his office.
“Did he say drone bombers?” I asked, a little white myself.
“He’s got a point,” Danny said faintly, almost to himself. “As long as you keep up with them, you’re fairly safe, but what if someone like Barry walked up to the White House? There’d be nothing anyone could do to stop a wall destroying punch from blowing through the fence. Lord knows if they could be stopped with rifle fire or similar.” Danny then gave a half-hearted chuckle. “And we probably shouldn’t choose a president solely on their ability to deal with an attacker.”
I closed my eyes and let my head drop into my arms on the table. “Damn it.”
Seen through that lens, this was the first time I might actually agree with some of that reporter’s rhetoric about giving everyone the ability to access this power. But then again, Barry hadn’t used my method... I sighed out loud. “There’s not a good answer to any of this, is there?” I asked through my arms.
“No,” Danny agreed with me. “But then again, life’s full of tough choices, isn’t it? You’re probably going to need to pick up some actual self-defense lessons too.”
I sat back up. “That thought had crossed my mind. We were basically both brawling out there. If I’d known how to actually take him down and pin him, we’d be having a completely different conversation.”
I grabbed my tablet which had been recovered from outside as well, banged up but still working. “Alright, suck it up time then. What projects do we have going on that aren’t easily movable?”
Danny thought for a moment. “Your project with Robert trying to cycle water. Which takes on a new urgency if that makes it easier to get breakthroughs. The small group lessons you’ve been doing. I was hoping to more formalize a mixed martial arts thing. Melissa and Karen have both been trying to keep up with college work on top of whatever various things they’ve been doing for you,” He listed out.
I nodded, taking notes. “Fort Leonard Wood is a commute, but that’s not impossible to do. Especially now that it’s not flooding daily. Karen’s been mainly dealing with the plants upstairs and now we’ve got to start that over from scratch. We can switch schedules for Robert to come back here, or maybe we can get his parents to bring him over.”
I paused, tapping the screen. “Melissa’s finishing up her technique and supposed to be teaching that, which can be done anywhere. I wanted her and you to try doing something elementally too, since you both are internal energy and had an actual element. How’s that going for you?”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“I can raise my temperature to mild fever on command,” Danny shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s on purpose or because of strain. I’ll let you know if I figure out something better with it.”
“Ah.” I tapped the screen. “I’ve only done a few of the small group lessons, but those have been pretty useful to just get different thoughts on the same process. But again, something we can schedule around.” I sighed. “There’s nothing major stopping us from moving then. Mike’s a long distance relationship and hell, being on a base might actually be easier to see him,” I laughed to myself at the thought. “Downsides are going to include that sucky amount of time to get onto base like we saw when we were there.”
“At least base life means we’re least likely to have problems with things the military is keeping up with, though,” Danny noted for me.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know how often you’ve been shopping, but things are getting expensive. No more cheap Chinese imports of clothing and things. All those ‘Buy American’ people from previous decades must be pretty smug right now, since we’ve been cut off from overseas shipping. Automated air freight only and with them having more faults? Supply and demand. Supply has gone down and demand probably hasn’t changed much.”
I paused, thinking. I didn’t just buy anything off the racks, but there had been the fairly frequent few dollar jumps in prices. “Huh. I guess I hadn’t really noticed. I’ve been making a hell of a lot more from my Seeker paycheck than I have before, so a lot of it’s still been going into savings.”
“I expect we’re going to have a semi-permanent military presence in agriculture to keep inflation and supply under control, but a lot of other businesses are going to change.” Danny nodded towards Brent’s office. “The Seekers aren’t a business in the normal sense of the word, but Brent’s been going over a whole lot of that sort of thing with me.”
“Huh.”
“Speaking of business, if we’re moving. Would you rather job benefits or cash to buy stuff yourself?” Danny asked me.
I gave him a confused look. “You’ve already got medical benefits and things for me as part of this job?”
“No, I mean support benefits. A company car, but more in the realm of ‘a company whatever you need’ type thing,” Danny replied. “You’re going to get a pay raise regardless, I’m just trying to figure out if it should be enough to let you buy a house and everything that goes with that, or if you’d rather I just hire someone to handle all of that, have the Seekers purchase a house and supply it to you as a job perk.”
“I don’t know?” I offered, quickly overwhelmed.
Danny nodded. “I figured. We’ll just do it through company perks and bump your salary to whatever’s necessary to cover taxes for it. One of the random benefits of having Brent is getting him to call random people in the government to answer stupid questions. Like IRS taxes.”
“Fun,” I dryly responded. “Hey, speaking of phone calls. Do you think Brent’s actually going to get a bomber to shoot those guys?”
“When he starts talking about getting people in the government to do things, I’ve yet to see him undersell what he’s trying to get done,” Danny answered my question.
I looked towards Brent’s office and hesitated, before getting up and heading that way. Danny gave me a look before getting up himself and following.
Inside the office, Brent was looking at his computer while talking on the phone. “I’ve got both pairs following their car right now, they’ve got their trackers running. Rolla SWAT and a good portion of the rest of their force should be attempting to follow the primary target if they’ve followed directions. Conventional SWAT weapons have had limited effect on the primary, however.”
Brent paused, listening, and then looked over at us. He motioned for us to sit. “Yes, assume NIJ level four body armor capability or better with an unknown length of time before resistance breakdown.”
He was quiet again for a moment as he listened to the response. “Correct, which is why I’m requesting a resource acquisition. Kick it up the chain, I don’t have eyes on the primary at the moment so we’ve got some time, but the primary may be capable of teaching this to others. Look at case five assumptions.”
“You’re welcome to jump through my contacts with them. I’m sending them over now,” Brent answered another question quickly. “Detail One is in my office, is there anything else you need from me right now?” He listened for a moment. “Alright, I’ll call back if I get anything before you.”
Brent then hung up with whoever he was talking to and looked at us. “Yes?”
“Fort Leonard Wood,” I answered. “Can I still hold some classes here though?”
Brent seemed to mentally shift gears and nodded. “They won’t be on any set schedule and you’ll have to accept some actual guards. I’d rather get people authorization to come onto base instead, however. Do you have any issues with adding more people to your classes? Or doing a few more in general if you need to keep the class size small?”
“I can,” I said, after thinking about it for a moment. “Not like I’m going to have a whole lot to do otherwise, right?”
“Beyond the fact that I doubt we’d be capable of doing it, you’re not going to be a prisoner or anything like that,” Brent disagreed with a shake of his head. “This is for general protection of everyone involved, not to isolate you. What would have happened if Barry had decided to just start destroying the building two days ago? I’m fairly certain falling beams would have majorly hurt those it didn’t kill. You’re the only one I’d make any assumptions on getting out of it lightly and even then I wouldn’t assume that before I saw Barry taking NATO rounds like a champ today.”
I cursed mentally, another thing I hadn’t thought of. “You don’t have to sell it to me anymore. Danny’s even going to have the Seekers buy a house for me, apparently.”
“Once we’ve got this a little more under control, I’ll make some more calls to start getting everything moved,” Brent responded. “Danny, are you staying or going as well?”
“I’ll commute. I’m hoping to keep this place as our headquarters. It’ll make us a little easier to reach for normal stuff, but keep the bigger things separated too,” Danny answered.
“Sounds like a plan. Nicole, I’ll leave it up to you to discuss with your friends and team how they want to handle it. Anything sensitive will need to stay on base, though.” Brent looked at me again.
“I’ll talk to them. And we’ll figure out who in the Seekers can make it to the base instead of just coming here.”