(Y7, January 13th/April 29th Earthside)
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Sammael extended his hand.
“Greetings. Got notified of your coming. Are you the one who keeps stealing the Silvergates we seize?”
The man who had just entered the Special Agent In Charge’s office smiled.
“Not as much as I’d like, but we got… some. I’m Taylor Preston.”
The man didn’t need to tell more. Sammael Rosenby had been notified of a visitor coming from Langley itself. And while the FBI and the CIA had limited interactions, it wasn’t hard to figure out why someone from the Agency’s very headquarters would be coming to visit his distant Atlanta office.
“So, if that’s not you, who keeps stealing my finds?”
“Officially, I have no idea. Unofficially, I have scuttlebutt that ends in a base in Colorado, but that’s as far as speculation goes.”
“The Army? Should have guessed.”
“Your guesses are as good as mine.”
They both relaxed in their chairs, and Rosenby waited until his visitor started again.
“I came here because of rumors.”
“Rumors?”
“Apparently, you are running some operation within Northworld?”
Rosenby made a face. Jurisdiction problems were coming in, obviously.
“The proper definition of Northworld is… well, blurry. It’s not a different country…”
“But a different world,” Preston cut.
“Which has no strict borders with ours. Every part of it is adjacent to every place in America.”
Preston waved away the argument.
“Anyway, I’m not here to debate about what Northworld is in legal terms. Look, I don’t envy you because enforcing the Gater Act is a lousy job and probably a losing war, but what Congress wants, Congress gets. I am not sure I can help with that. If you think you can do a great job, all the power to you.”
“So, what brings you? And why would a sting operation I’m running be of interest to you?”
Preston crossed his fingers and made a frowning face.
“CIA and the State Department are, of course, interested in Northworld since it’s basically the international melting pot. Every nation on Earth has Gaters these days, and they’re all mingling in the same places.”
Rosenby waited to see where Preston was going.
“One of the places we’ve got a near-permanent presence these days is the town of Glacier on Northworld. Heard of it?”
“No. I’m not that familiar with all the geography of Northworld. My specialists probably have info on it. But continue.”
“We’re interested in Glacier because it’s North Korea central. There’s only a handful of NK Gaters, and they all managed to get there, somehow.”
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Rosenby smiled.
“Ah. Direct intel pipeline into the Heartland of Darkness.”
Preston shrugged.
“We’re pretty sure one of them is relatively highly placed in the regime. And he’s covering for his Gater comrades. That, or the regime has finally an unofficial stance on the subject, since officially, Gating does not exist and is pure Western propaganda. But what is intriguing isn’t the NK aspect. Our agent there just Recessed three days ago with far more interesting stuff.”
Rosenby leaned on his desk. Preston kept talking.
“There’s a number of… high-profile, for Northworld, faces showing up on Glacier over the last two weeks. All long-standing Gaters with very high levels. 2000 and over. And that includes Arnoldo Fontana.”
Rosenby had, of course, heard that name. The very first user of a Silvergate. The guy from which all that shit had flown across the world until it landed on his desk.
“I presume they’re not there to make a peace conference on the topic of NK?”
“No, but there was a kind of conference. Our guy wasn’t directly involved, but he had a local friend who belongs to one of the Gater organizations…”
“They call those Guilds”, Sammael corrected.
“… involved in the conference. It turns out that those high-ranking Gaters are going to do an expedition on something they call The Pyramid. And from what he’s heard, there’s someone from the FBI that is involved.”
Oh shit, it’s about Henry, thought Sammael. Preston was now looking at him questioningly. Rosenby tried to figure out how to explain, then sighed.
“I can guess who they are referring to. One of the agents involved in our sting operation, Operation Swordfish. Henry Esteban.”
Preston snorted.
“Well, if they already know it’s the FBI, it’s not that much of a sting.”
“Henry was establishing contacts to insinuate himself into a major guild for Northworld. People called the Cartographers.”
“I know about them. Highly influential. They’re the information brokers of Northworld. We’re even… customers of them, in the occasion.”
Sammael’s eyebrow rose. But then, of course, the CIA would purchase information they could use. Most of the time, it was cheaper and easier than stealing it.
“He was trying to embed himself and went on an expedition with a number of Cartographers to a place where they found a kind of Aztec Pyramid ‘dungeon’ as they call them.”
Preston acquiesced.
“I’ll assume that what those guys called ‘The Pyramid’ refers to that location.”
“Anyway, most of the Cartographers died in that Pyramid and three people managed to escape, including Henry. I have his report on the thing if you really want…”
“I’m very interested in a copy. And talking to the guy once he comes out of Northworld since I assume he’s there if he’s involved.”
“Will forward you. But you will have a hard time talking to Henry. He left the USA.”
“What?”
“The Pyramid he got attacked in was set up looking as some form of fantasy control center, but it ran a kind of scripted attack scenario. It had holograms of some of those weird critters you find, except that they were supposed to be Gaters like us and some more contrived fantasies. He took it way too seriously and did not like when I told him to drop it.”
“People have been looking for aliens since Northworld was discovered.”
Sammael laughed.
“And found plenty of traces that look as fabricated as the rest of that theme park. I’ve read a bit of those websites where they discuss those quote-findings-unquote, and they make for entertaining reading. Anyway, I’ve forwarded the report upstairs, but I’ve never heard anything about it afterward. So they apparently shared my opinion on the likelihood of that.”
Preston made a pained face.
“You should have investigated.”
“I have seven Silvergates. Seven. Whenever I get one by chance, someone like you comes in and sweeps it away. I can’t spend all my agents’ time chasing rumors if I want to identify and dismantle large Gater gangs funneling Silvergates to the ‘ungated’ population. One of the guys he was following got his Gate from those Cartographers.”
“And what caused your agent to leave the country?”
“My main thought is that it was a woman. Another of the people he was with for the Pyramid scenario was a Swedish woman, and that’s where he left for. I send a pair to try to talk him since the only thing I can hang on him is the Gater Act, and that’s not going to work for extradition in Sweden.”
Preston exhaled.
“I need that report. Because from what I heard, the major Gater organizations are taking that Pyramid seriously.”
“Aliens? You seriously think so?”
“I don’t know myself, but the most experienced Gaters apparently do think there’s something fundamental in that Pyramid. And the Glacier conference was only one… they’re coming from every place in Northworld. Every high-level Gater mustering. In Northworld, that’s nearly unprecedented.”
Preston’s gaze pierced Sammael.
“Drop the charges. Tell your guy that we’ll give him full immunity from the Gater Act and any prosecution. Heck, if necessary, I’ll recruit him in the Agency for the Northworld Section instead of the FBI if that’s what it takes. I want to talk to him.”