Sidewalk and road wind in front of them, dark except for two streetlamps that flicker a weak, warm tone. Nearly outshone by the waning moon overhead.
"One more block." Barclay says.
The dark doesn't bother Scrypher, but the quiet unnerves her. It feels wrong. Too still. She casts her head about, hoping her helmet's cameras flag some sort of movement.
Nothing. Not even a stray cat.
"Is it usually this empty over here?" She says.
Barclay bats a hand through the air. "Oh, definitely. We're pretty far off main street and this area isn't zoned for residential. Got a bunch of corporate offices, warehouses, and whatever other mixed-use stuff is allowed out here." He tugs at a curl of his mustache and swallows the start of a laugh. "It's been a little while since I took the exam."
Words fight to get out of her throat, but she bites down on the meat of her lip with well practiced — albeit painful — grace. He's friendly. Kind. But, there's one thing she can't get past: his laziness. Their laziness.
The anger simmers; it gives rise to more words. Creative words. Words that pepper her otherwise indomitable will and transform her into a kettle set to scream. Tongue scalding, she massages those impulsive words into something... acceptable. "I know it's not required in every jurisdiction, but you local licensees should still be doing it yearly." She says.
*No wonder all of you struggle to keep yourselves in check.
An unwelcome, boil over of a thought. She clenches her teeth and braces for the impending silence.
Sucking in a sharp breath, Barclay passes an anxious hand over his scalp. "You're not wrong—"
*I know that.
Another one that twists something at her core. Another that's true, yet more rude than he deserves.
"— I really should schedule a date for it, but it's hard to fit in between all the patrols and—" His words catch on something; he leans forward and squints his eyes, trying to make out something in the distance. "Are the lights on?"
Relief. Cold, relieving relief. She clears her throat and trains her helmet's cameras past Barclay, onto the source of his confusion.
The familiar crisscross of streets between well-defined city blocks is gone. Ahead, the road forks off. Each fork leads to another towering structures: industrial warehouses, smokestacks, exactly one mountain of gravel. In the middle of it all, a dolphin stretches upward as if it longs to jump. To leap into the sky and swim among the giants made of steel, brick, and stone. Cordia Aquarium's very own rooftop eyesore.
With a hand, Scrypher twists a false rivet at the side of her helmet. At once, the whirring of cameras fill her ears and her display changes. It zooms in. Further and further until convex curves of a concrete facade come into focus. Curves meet in the middle like two breaking waves and windows set into the rocky surface paint their own, warped reflection of the cosmos.
She twists a separate dial: another false rivet that clicks once. The image flickers. Splotches of color replace her view. Burning shades of orange, yellow, and red. Blues, purples, and blacks that swallow the rest. Thermal imaging.
Beyond the aquarium's glass, orange radiates out from the center of a block of blue. A doorway, probably.
How the hell did he see that from here?
Barclay offers her a thin-lipped smile. An odd sight given his heat-world counterpart's plasma-like complexion. "Well?" He says.
She clicks off thermals. "One light is on just off the lobby. You sure it shouldn't be?"
"Yes." He scoffs. "Probably some high school kids that snuck in. Happens all the time. I bet Val heard a rumor that a group was going to give it a go tonight." Her display highlights his eyes with two green squares and zooms in unprompted. The usual micro-movements she'd expect aren't there, frozen with the rest of him. Scrypher rolls her eyes, unseen within the safety of her helmet. "Val?"
"The owner."
"I know: it sounds too familiar. You're playing favorites again."
"Still stuck on our café visit, then?"
"Yes, you can't keep mixing your personal and professional life. You're going to lose the public's trust."
"That's for feds to stress themselves out with, not us local folks. Taking an interest is exactly what gets them to trust and depend on us. It's not like we're swamped with work either. Plenty of life to live if you're not chasing the most wanted, preventing war, or whatever it is you do."
"A lot of office work."
Barclay twiddles the tip of his mustache. "Ah. Office work is what they're calling it?"
"Yes. Office work. Like I said."
In a handful of minutes, they reach the outskirts of the aquarium's parking lot. A lone sedan sits nearby in employee-only parking. Empty. Beyond it, street lamps stand tall amid a sea of blacktop. Their lights cast away little darkness, the flickering whimpers of amber that they are.
Barclay barrels past Scrypher; the car soon after. He claps his hands and rubs them together. "Okay, then. Let's get this over with!"
As the sound of Barclay's clap bounces of the aquarium's concrete facade and hurtles back at them, Scrypher's mind transforms; it flushes away all of her discomfort. Her grievances, her annoyances, her anger. By the time the echo hits them, she's an entirely new person. A better person. A useful person. She plants both feet on the black and white seam where concrete and asphalt meet. "We're not going in yet."
Barclay's stride falters. His momentum peters out and he swings around to face her. "Why not?"
"Patrol Procedures, Subsection 2.1."
"Is that really necessary? It's just a bunch of kids; we can hop in there, see them out, and be on our way. Ten minutes flat."
"Information gathering is the first step of patrol response. We have plenty of time: if we skip it, we're digging a hole for someone else to push us in."
He looks back at the aquarium for a moment. Then, letting out a sigh, he trudges over to meet her. "Do you even need to have that section memorized?"
She clasps her hands behind her back, squeezing a tad too tight. "It's mandatory for every FBH licensee to learn the policy booklet — federal, state, or local. In its entirety. Cover to cover."
"Yeah, yeah. But, you probably haven't been out on patrol for a few years. What's the point?"
She reaches up and twists a dial on her helmet. "It's policy."
Her display zooms in on the aquarium. Nothing new: light still on in that hallway off the lobby; nobody in sight that may have flipped the switch.
In a flash, enormous versions of Barclay's nostrils take center stage. Both dark and spewing unorganized masses of black hair. "Well? Can we go about this information gathering?" He says.
"Fine."
That lone sedan catches the corner her eye. She taps on another rivet: two lights bursts forth from near her helmet's cameras, casting long, hazy beams across the parking lot. She strides over to peak through the driver-side window. "Do you know whose car this is?" She says.
Cordia Woodwind Orchestra Vol 2. CD, empty protein bar wrapper, sports bra. College music major, maybe?
Barclay shrugs. "Nope! Could belong to the kids inside, but you'll also get the occasional person that parks here overnight to avoid early morning parking restrictions. Val doesn't mind it."
She taps off her lights. "We can find out from whoever is inside. Before we enter, I suggest we do a circuit of the building. I'll take the left and you take the right."
He pulls down on the leg holes of his ridiculous leotard, letting them snap back to sit lower on his thighs. "Sure thing." He doesn't wait for her. Instead, he speeds off in a grandmother-style fast walk and waves over his shoulder. "Meet you around back!"
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
He definitely had a wedgie. She zooms in with her camera, close enough to make out the individual glinting facets of the gems on his oversized belt. Still does.
----------------------------------------
The walk is nice. Quiet. No crowds, no noise, and no pestering partner to constantly distract her from her job. She strolls to a stop at the meeting spot and darts her eyes up to the clock in the corner of her heads-up display. Three minutes since they started.
She casts her head around, giving her helmet's sensors the chance to highlight anything interesting. The display stays dark. He should be here by now.
Another minute passes, then another. Her shoulders climb up her neck like an angry turtle about to snap. What is he doing over there?
She kicks off toward Barclay's half of the building and mumbles under her breath. "Wasn't he jogging or something?"
As her foot hits the ground, her speakers click. A moment later, a deep, throaty voice booms. "Agent Scrypher?" The question sends vibrations through her helmet's interlocking chrome plates.
She keeps her pace, but presses two fingers against a rivet at ear level. "Yeah. What do you need?"
"Thank goodness. Officer Erickson with CCHD. I'm reading your location as near Cordia Aquarium, is that correct?"
"Yes. There's no reason it wouldn't be, now get to the point. What's wrong?"
"We've received a nine-one-one call from a woman inside the aquarium. She says there's a man trying to murder her. 6'2", green coveralls, and blonde hair styled into a pompadour. CCPD doesn't have any units close enough to respond, can you take the call?"
Every word pushes her pace faster. By his last, she's sprinting. "Got it." She says, then clicks off the radio with another tap.
Wind parts around her. The sky and its scattering of clouds blend into hasty brushstrokes that swirl around bursts of yellow, red, and orange. Stars. Too many to count. A pang of guilt rings out into the emptiness. Did they get to him already?
A short distance later and a sound carries on the wind, caught by microphones and amplified by arcane algorithms she doesn't understand. Barclay's voice, albeit distorted. "*Ahhh — ahhh, hahhh!"
Guilt pangs again, deeper. It rocks her heart's foundation and threatens to send her plummeting into the earth. Is he screaming for help?
She whips around a corner. A loading dock is up ahead with a single white box truck, its open container facing the concrete loading platform. Beside the driver's window, a broad, towering man in purple spandex bellows laughs into the sky. It's Barclay. Lazy, irritating Barclay. None worse for wear and all the more lively.
But who is he talking to?
Even with all the jostling of a full sprint, her display zeroes in on a man sitting in the driver's seat — automatically adjusting color balance, contrast, and brightness to bring out his details in the shadows: red burr; too many muscles around his neck. Laughing too. Scrypher skids to a stop two dozen feet away. So there's more than one? A full team?
Rubber grinds over asphalt; a sound like sand crunching between teeth. Barclay jerks his head to look, wiping tears from his eyes. "Oh, Scrypher! Sorry to leave you waiting back there: figured you start working this way after enough time." He lets his shoulders fall with a contented sigh. "Ronan here was just telling me a story about—"
Her heart kicks. Shifts into a different gear that has it trembling. She buries her hand into the chest of her coat and wraps her hand around the grip of a revolver, hidden in a sleek holster at her waist. Her eyes don't move from the man in the truck's cab. "Stop. Dispatch called, said there's been an emergency call from inside. We've got a woman on the run from someone trying to kill her in there."
"What?" Both men say, equally full of alarm.
Another kick. She whips her gun out and eyes the driver down the seven inch barrel. "Back away from him, Barclay."
Barclay's entire demeanor changes. No longer carefree and limber. Now stiff. Muscles, limbs, and spine statuesque. He splays his fingers and snaps them back into a fist. Each completion of the movement sends crackles of bones and joints plinking around the loading dock. "Did they say who called?" He says.
"No. Now back away like I said: I'll handle him."
He doesn't go far, but he twirls his mustache around a finger and drifts to the side — his feet heavier, his mind's gears visibly churning.
The man in the cab — Ronan, by Barclay's account — speaks up; a confident, boisterous, and playful tone. "Barclay here took my phone so I can't tell you exactly what's going on in there. No one is getting murdered, though."
Scrypher edges forward, scraping rubber soles over asphalt. I need to get closer.
He yanks on a handle and shoves open his door. "We don't need to be uncivil, I'm not—"
She jolts to a halt, but her aim doesn't waver despite sweat-slicked palms. "Don't move!"
Ronan freezes in his seat. His chest doesn't rise or fall with his breathing, neither do his shoulders or stomach. It's strange; inhumane.
Her display highlights his eyes with two green squares and zooms in unprompted. The usual micro-movements she'd expect aren't there, frozen with the rest of him.
She narrows her eyes. Something to do with his power? I just need one more step...
"Okay, okay. You got it. Not moving. I thought I'd speed this whole thing up since you seem to be in a hurry. My bad." He says, his lips escaping whatever spell froze the rest of him. "I've never been arrested before, so you know better than me."
Lifting her back foot, Scrypher lunges forward.
Then the world is gone. No transition, no fanfare; just a blink. In its place is an endless space of shifting, cream-colored haze — a horizon of clouds and light as far as the eye can see. Her own homemade purgatory. Outside of time; separate; and alone. Except, her target floats frozen in the center. Suspended like the truck was still underneath him. She lets her revolver fall to her side, its weight dragging down her limp arm.
How things go now is simple: one question, then this purgatory will collapse. Everything rewinds and only she will ever know that a question was asked.
She sucks in a breath, letting her shoulders relax and her gaze wander down to her feet. More cream-colored clouds float below her. Shifting and tumbling past a translucent floor that looks like a platform of clear jello. It doesn't wiggle, at least.
Just do a little more.
Fine. Letting the breath roll out her nose, she snaps up her head and paces around Ronan. Eyes him past her display's numerous, frozen readouts. What do I ask? How can I unsettle him?
He has no body modifications, no tan, no injuries. Not a single blemish upon his skin. His build too — broad; athletic. Carefully crafted. She unfastens her porcelain faceplate and — straining up on her tiptoes — she sniffs as high as she can reach: the edge of his t-shirt's muscle-warped sleeve.
Not even a faint smell of dry sweat. She leans back down and drops, landing on the floor with her legs crossed.
All the sudden, she's conscious of her helmet. The things heavy. Painful. Another thing to think about. She rips it off her head and slams it onto the floor beside her. Hot needles prick every inch of skin, sending a wave of numbness crashing down her spine.
It's not just the helmet.
It's a thought.
A thought that burrows and nips, like a school of piranhas set loose upon her mind: It's everything... all of it. It's just too much. She digs her nails at her scalp, past her sweat-drenched mat of blonde hair. Strands tear free of her pony tail. Each one triggers a burst of relief that traces all the way through her nerves — directly to her brain.
She yanks on the hair band and it falls away. A cascade of shimmering blonde frames her face like unfastened curtains: left free to sway with an open window's breeze.
That's it. Relief.
Cream-colored haze swirls around her, mixing with the air that she breathes. It's warm. Pleasant. Far from the dry yet clammy that these northern nights somehow manage.
Tension seeps out of her body. She closes her eyes and savors the feeling of warmth around her.
Ronan is where she left him when she opens her eyes. Still frozen. She swivels on her butt to face away from him and out into the clouds. "I just need a little break." She whispers.
And time doesn't pass.
It's odd. She stares out into the haze and her thoughts drift with it — her perception too. How long would this be out there?
Beams of light pierce the air around her, cast from a golden starburst peaking through gaps in the clouds above. For now she has all the time she needs: no matter how long.
After all, this has never been purgatory to her.
----------------------------------------
At some point far in the present, the thought is finally gone. She climbs back to her feet and stares into Ronan's frozen eyes. Suppose I better get back.
Possible questions flit through her mind like flashcards. Who do you work for? How many are inside? What's your plan?
Trite; pedestrian. Unlikely to help her really get into his head. Her eyes drift over the well defined bicep forcing his t-shirt sleeve to warp. A second of silent contemplation: that's all it takes for inspiration to crystalize at the center of her mind. She clicks her tongue and snaps her fingers in unison. That's it.
She snaps her porcelain plate back into its place and trains her revolver back on him, careful to match her original pose millimeter for millimeter. "What exercises are on the schedule for today?"
His eyes light up, his body judders. He breaks free from his stagnation as if she just jammed a coin into an animatronic fortune teller. "They're not anymore! Did them before I met up with the fine folks that are here tonight: two sets of twelve one-legged squats, two sets of ten one-armed pull ups, and two sets of twenty-five two-legged hanging leg raises!" He pauses; the ethereal space flickers. "Oh, speaking of exercise. Before you take me to the station — if you wouldn't mind — could you grab the bag of protein chips out of the cab? About due for another round on those. Don't want to—"
She closes her eyes and cold, clammy air fills her nostrils with her next breath. Noise crashes into her: the distant humming of industrial machines, passing cars on the highway, the other two's various fidgeting. She sucks in a breath and lets it flow out through pursed lips. A few more hours.
"So what's the plan?" Ronan says.
Scrypher forces out the remaining air in an audible huff. "You don't get to ask questions."
He swipes a palm over his head's red stubble. "Right, right. You're right, that makes a lot of sense." His eyes go wide and he jerks his hand back to where it was. "Oh! You said freeze. Right."
Work toward it.
"Quit playing games. We've been watching you for a while, you know?" She says.
"You have? Why, though? Have you tried television movies instead? There's a channel, Hallmark. They're my—"
She ignores him. "Always sticking to your routine; never mixing it up. I've got weeks of reports on you by now. Today's squats day, right? Two sets of twelve?"
A smile breaks across his face. He relaxes: the uncanny stillness breaks and his arms start to fall back to rest on the door. "Oh! That's right, but—"
Before he can finish, she twitches the barrel upward twice. "Nope, keep them up. Any further and you're done."
He freezes again. "Sorry! I'm just trying to follow you're lead here. Anyways, I was saying that they're one-legged squats. You didn't even mention the two sets of ten one-armed pull ups or two sets of—"
Muscles rippling under his leotard, Barclay interjects. His voice is cold. Dangerous. "We're not sitting here while you list out your entire exercise routine." He says.
Anger boils in her stomach; the background hum turns to screeching cries inside her ears. Why the fuck would he interrupt me? My process?
It's an instant reaction. An annoying reaction that she'll never be able to change. She exhales, trying to bring herself back into balance. No. You're fine. Stay calm. Everything is fine.
Even then, she hisses her words. "You're in deep shit if you don't tell us how many of you there are, start talking."
Ronan sucks in a breath through clenched teeth. "Oh, that's going to be a problem. Sorry. Not talking to you all was part of the job description."