The first place Dan visited was not Matilda Fairbank's office. Instead, it was the little dojo she'd dragged him to way back when she'd first demanded to study Dan's powers. It wasn't owned by her, but rather an old customer who had agreed to lend her its use for a brief time. Dan couldn't remember why her office was unavailable. She'd given him some vague excuse, but he was beginning to suspect that Bartholomew had known her office location, maybe had even monitored it, and Matilda had still wanted to keep Dan's secret for herself. Her partnership with the mad scientist had appeared to be one of convenience and necessity, not one of united interest.
Dan was unsurprised to find the dojo in use, and without Meyers' red sedan anywhere in sight. He watched through filthy glass windows as a tall white man in a karate gi taught a class of kindergarteners how to kick pieces of wood. He ran his veil into the back offices, checking for other people. He found a man in the office using the computer. He sat slightly hunched, and pecked at the keyboard with his fingertips like an old man. Dan didn't even need to see the man to know it wasn't Bartholomew.
Dan checked below the dojo for a secret base but found nothing. He wasn't sure if he should be relieved by that fact or not. Either way, his suspicions here were sated. Time for the main attraction. He stepped from one location to the next.
Matilda Fairbanks had operated a solo consulting business out of a rented office space. This office was located in a moderately sized building at the edge of downtown Austin. Dan appeared on the steps outside the lobby, and was immediately caught off-guard by the building being closed. It was currently past midnight, the parking lot was empty and so was the lobby. Dan frowned at the sight. Unfortunate, but not insurmountable.
He walked up to the glass and peered inside. The lobby was beautifully tiled with polished brown stone. There was a broad darkwood desk posted by the entrance that was currently unoccupied, preceding a broad swathe of empty floor. Past the lobby was a thick section of marble that reached up to the ceiling. Elevators, Dan presumed, facing perpendicular to the entrance. On the side of the pillar, facing the entrance, was a black notice board filled with office and floor numbers.
Matilda's office had been listed as suite 431. Dan peered at the notice board for a moment, before giving it up as too far and too small. He briefly considered simply teleporting into the lobby, but quickly stifled that impulse. Dan had spent most of his working life in buildings like this. There was undoubtedly a security guard roaming around the first floor, ready to turn the corner any moment now. If Dan simply appeared inside, the guard might assume he had a key, and belonged there. On the other hand, the building wasn't so large that the guard wouldn't know most of the faces, and Dan didn't want to take a risk and get tased.
He pulled out his phone, activated the camera function, and zoomed in on the board. His fancy future-phone easily made out the suite numbers. After a few moments of search, he realized that Matilda had been struck from the premises. He found another listing in the 400's instead, noted the floor—The fourth floor, which made sense—and snapped a picture just in case.
Dan turned away from the door and walked away from the entrance towards the side of the building. He kept a long, steady stride even as his veil snuck its way up the walls of the building. He counted each floor as it passed, finally settling on the fourth. It swept the first room it reached, making sure it was empty, and Dan vanished mid stride. He appeared in total darkness. Dan fumbled briefly, then sent out his veil once more. It quickly located the tell-tale signs of electric wiring, and Dan fumbled for the light switch.
He was inside a broom closet. Dan grumbled to himself, then blinked out into the hallway. He walked with confidence, knowing that he was unlikely to be stopped. The floor was almost certainly empty, though he'd spooled out some threads to confirm that fact, and anyone watching the cameras would assume he was an employee. Dan knew that most office buildings outsourced their security to a remote location, and those operators would have no idea that he didn't work for whoever operated on this floor. They'd assume that, if he was inside, he belonged there.
Dan strode down the hallway, checking for life, and monitoring the number on each suite he passed. He quickly found 431, and approached it without breaking stride. He quietly bunched his sleeve around his right hand, covering his fingerprints. His veil darted out in front of him, zipping up the door and into the deadbolt right as Dan reached the handle. His veil pulsed, Dan seized the handle with his covered hand, and pushed the door open without resistance. He stepped inside, closed the door, and replaced the deadbolt. Once again, his veil whispered the location of the lights, and Dan flipped the switch. They woke only after a dozen languid flashes. Dan blinked at his surroundings, taking it in.
He comfort in the fact that he was right: Matilda Fairbanks' office had been pillaged by the feds, and then left untouched by her former landlord. Papers lay scattered about the small office, little more than a waiting room attached to a larger study. The door between the two rooms hung open, one hinge missing. The drywall was cracked around it, indicating that the door had been broken down rather than opened with a key. This was supported by the small circular dent resting beside the door knob. A police battering ram, Dan assumed.
He scooped up a few of the loose papers and examined them. It was old paperwork, a few info blurbs on new upgrades, and some receipts. Dan checked them for an address, and tossed them aside when the office suite was listed. He strolled into Matilda's main office, flicked on the light, and took a look at her desk. It was a bulky mahogany executive's desk, covered with discarded papers. The floor was similarly carpeted, and Dan began to sort through the various clutter.
There was little of interest to an investigator here. Nothing incriminating, certainly. Most of it had to do with Matilda's job as an upgrade analyst. A few typed up notes and critiques of various popular upgrades, some more info packets on upcoming releases, the odd billing sheet. Dan kept his veil sweeping the outside, just in case, while he speed-read each page, looking for that one single piece of information that he needed.
He kept his phone on silent.
Dan hit the jackpot after about ten minutes. It was one of those spam credit card offers that came in the mail every other day, that Matilda must have brought with her from home. An accident, Dan assumed, just a little twist of fate. It carried her home address on the header, and Dan had everything he needed. He searched the address up online, and had a satellite photo of the street within a minute.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He peered at it, taking in the seemingly normal gated community. Matilda's house was tucked into the furthest corner of the little neighborhood, its back against a sprawling wooded area. Similar to Dan's own house, Matilda appeared to own two lots. Her house hadn't grown to match the size of the property it inhabited, and looked comically small at the center of its gargantuan, fenced in plot. This lead to the somewhat favorable circumstances of keeping a large distance between the home and its nearest neighbors.
It wasn't perfect for a fugitive terrorist to hide, but it was pretty damn good. Especially given that people weren't inclined to look at the former residence of a lawbreaker. It just wasn't done. The social stigma carried over even to law enforcement, though Dan doubted that was the case here. The APD were simply overwhelmed. If they hadn't checked Matilda's house, and he was nearly positive that they hadn't, it had either been an oversight or a lack of information. Hell, Bartholomew was technically the FBI's problem. Gregoir had only started to look into the man, and might not even know the connection between the terrorist and Matilda Fairbanks. Dan had certainly not thought to mention it.
But it was a lead, and Dan intended to look into it.
He carefully picked his point of entry. Bartholomew had proven to be more clever than he acted. Dan had to assume the man had set up defenses of some kind. Surveillance, at the very least. He eventually settled on the forest behind the house. Assuming the satellite photo was recent, there was a heavy amount of foliage to hide inside and observe the situation.
Dan flicked the lights out in Matilda's office, checked to make sure the door was properly locked, then vanished.
He appeared in a forest, gazing outward. His Navigator had found him a point nestled between two trees and a bush, giving him the perfect window to gaze out at Matilda Fairbank's house. Dan fell squatted down, hand on the bare dirt, and let his veil crawl through the surface of the earth. It was slow going, as Dan was extremely careful to catalogue everything his veil encountered: It would be just like Bartholomew to hide some kind of unpleasant surprise just below ground. Dan only found rocks.
He reached the wooden fence, and sent threads crawling through it. His search came up empty both above and below ground. Dan broadened his examination, threading the lawn on both sides, and the entirety of the fence. He made a mental map of the property's backyard, and came up with nothing of consequence.
Good enough.
Dan recalled his veil and willed himself next to the fence. He knelt beside it, this time willing his veil in the direction of the garage. It crawled along the ground until it met concrete and steel. It spread across the single car garage, and tasted rubber. His veil moved from the tire, to the engine, to the car itself. It traced the shape of the vehicle, giving Dan a rough idea of the shape.
Its size was right for a mid-sized sedan, but that wasn't evidence enough. After a moment's consideration, Dan ordered his veil to the passenger-side mirror. His veil pulsed, and the mirror appeared in Dan's outstretched hand. He turned it over, and glanced at its painted back: Red.
Dan's fingers tightened around the object, and his lips split into a snarl. His veil immediately redirected into the house. They tore across the wooden floor and shag rug, darting from room to room until— There! Life, sitting on a chair in front of a table. The table's surface was covered in bits of metal and rubber, and something heavy was being assembled. Dan's veil traced the man's clothing as he moved. He appeared to be assembling something.
Dan very nearly teleported into the room then and there. It was Cornelius that made Dan pause, the man's voice drifting across Dan's mind. They flowed from a memory, long distant. The older officer had been fully drunk at the time, slurring his words as he complained about the difficulty of assaulting a fortified position. "Caution," he'd said, jabbing a finger into Dan's chest. "Caution's yer bezz fren'. Always needa know... what ya walkin' into."
Dan considered his options, what he knew about Bartholomew, and what he'd learned since the man had escaped. It took real effort not to flinch as recent events crossed Dan's mind. His breath stopped. He slowly inched away from the fence, recalling a tiny part of his veil and sending it back into the wood. With the care of a bomb defusal squad, he sent his veil out into the air at head level. Almost immediately, it brushed against the same cloud of not-air that had filled Dan's house.
Cold sweat poured down Dan's back as his veil followed the trail of the gas. The entire yard was covered, terminating at the borders of the fence. A brief check of the garage, and the house itself, confirmed Dan's fears. It was all contaminated, fully suffused by the invisible fog. Had Dan willed himself anywhere within the property, he would've suffered the same fate as Ito, except with the horrific addition of having delivered himself directly into his enemy's clutches.
Dan reached for his phone, fully intending to call for backup. Glancing at it, he noted the dozen missed calls from Ito, and a slew of angry texts. That was fine, this trip was fully worth it. Dan learned all that he could from here, and Bartholomew was effectively unreachable without a gas mask of some kind. Ito would be worried, and angry, enough. Dan had promised he'd leave it be. No more interference.
He moved to make the call, and found that his hand would not obey him. All he had to do was press send. Ito would pick up, Dan could explain what he'd found, the cavalry would come in and capture or kill Andros Bartholomew. Dan wouldn't be involved, but that was fine.
Except everything in Dan rebelled at that last thought. It hadn't seemed so bad, just half an hour ago. Bartholomew was a monster, and needed to be stopped, but he hadn't yet killed anyone that Dan cared about. It was a horrible way to look at it, cold and callous, but it was the truth. Dan wanted Bartholomew stopped, but he hadn't carried the same personal fury that had driven him to maim the man in their first encounter. There was anger, but Ito had cooled it with calm words and reasonable requests.
Dan hated the terrorist, and he felt a tremendous level of guilt for what had been done to others in an effort to get to Dan; that had never, ever changed. But it wasn't until Dan's house had been violated—the home that he shared with the woman he loved; the symbol of the new life he'd made in this world—that true rage had returned to him. It wasn't even the act itself, though it would be likely be months, if not years before he could sleep comfortably again in his own home. The illusion of his big, safe castle had been stripped away. That doubt, that violation, would linger there in the back of his mind forever. But the hatred was born of something deeper. It was fear, overriding and irrational, that this would never end unless Dan made it so with his own two hands. It was a reminder of weakness, of helplessness, of passivity. It was the shadow of Normal Dan, the man who could do nothing. How he hated that feeling. And it hadn't faded an ounce during his current investigation; it hung there in the background, urging him to murder the man he could feel with his power. Dan wanted so badly to comply.
It was only right, wasn't it? Bartholomew had come for him first.
It was justified.
Dan considered this, then tossed it aside. No need to sugarcoat things for his own conscience. It didn't matter to Dan, not really. He wanted it to, but it didn't. Dan had killed people before, and he'd slept like a baby the night after. Bartholomew would be no different. Maybe that was too flippant. Maybe, come tomorrow, this decision would weigh heavy on his soul. But not now. Right now, Bartholomew was not worthy of that consideration. He was nothing. Just another threat to the people Dan loved. Just another problem that needed to be solved. Dan didn't need to justify anything.
He dropped his phone into hammerspace and began to look for something heavy.