* * *
When Vallon walked into the AGS war room at nine p.m. Agent James Dean shifted in the airborne ‘desk’ and touched a button. The almost silent whir of electric motors came from the floor and the desk swooped across the miniaturized landscape to come to rest on the grey tiled floor near Gleason’s office.
Moore was nowhere to be seen and neither, thank god, was Gleason, so Vallon slipped through the concentric circles of desks and into Dean’s fire.
The man was pale as a ghost, but the afterburn poured off him in waves.
“‘Bout bloody well time you got here.” He checked his diver’s watch, hands shaking, and turned on her with a scowl he couldn’t quite pull off. Agent James Dean couldn’t have been further from his namesake—all straight-edged crew cut, tie and razor pleated suit trousers—along with a lack of imagination that made him, as far as Vallon was concerned, one of the most difficult of people to deal with.
“It’s nine and my shift starts then.”
“Agents generally relieve at least fifteen minutes ahead of time to ensure there’s time for a status update.” Checked his watch again and Vallon rolled her eyes.
“So I had something come up. Brief me while I take off my coat.” She slipped off her long leather jacket and tossed it at the coat rack, then slid into the seat he’d vacated, still unfortunately warm, and the seat seemed to hold on to his heavy floral aftershave.
“It will take longer than that.”
She looked down at the digital console of assignments—five agents out—and up at him. Touched the screen so it shifted to research mode. Good. Nothing barring her way. Even the side pocket was still full of vellum and fountain pens, but then Dean was never one to do things what he considered ‘the old-fashioned’ way.
She flipped back to the agent list. “So cut to the chase. What do I need to know?”
“We’ve got four events under investigation. One’s left over from earlier this evening.” Dean grabbed a bottle of inhibitor and knocked some back. A deep flush ran up his face.
Vallon nodded, waited as the tremor in his hands quieted.
“Hunt is checking out a couple of light tremors I picked up near Mount Rainier.”
“Could just be seismic activity,” she assessed. “Who else is out?”
“Chavez and Ingersoll.”
“The M and M twins ride again,” she murmured and checked their twenty: out beyond University of Washington in the Laurelhurst area. “That makes three?”
“The holdover from this evening. Flophouse/storefront change near Pioneer Square.”
Vallon stiffened and looked more closely at the Agent assignments. “Moore and Gleason?” She shot the question at Dean.
“The boss said there was something about it he didn’t like and that is was high time he got his hands dirty again. So he took the call. Been out since about seven thirty.”
Vallon fought back a little surge of concern and nodded. She’d barely left the vicinity by then. “Must be a lot to keep him tied up so long.”
“You might say that. Says he’s trying to get a handle on who had a hand in the change.”
The panic surged a little harder, because it was just too possible that in her attempt to assess who was responsible for the change, some sense of her presence would remain.
“Thanks for the update.” She managed to keep her voice steady. “Anything nationally I should know about?”
“Everything’s quiet and the other chairs report only the usual activity.”
She strapped into the harness, settled her headset in place, and punched the button that would lift her off the floor. A low hum and vibration ran up her back as she rose into the warmer air closer to the ceiling and left Dean behind to immerse herself in the world.
The chair hung above the map pit like a hawk in flight, which was how Vallon always felt when she was up here. At times the impulse to hold her arms out as if she were flying was almost too much to contain, because contrary to what she told Gleason, she loved the view of what was going on in the world.
Especially on active nights.
If it hadn’t been for the price of afterburn she would have even requested desk duty. At least occasionally.
She punched her code and the map beneath her reset to the broad expanse of North America. She hovered there and watched the rolling contours of the U.S. All as it should be. When she touched the computer screen, the map shifted beneath her, becoming the night-swathed shapes and contours of the Pacific Northwest.
The dipper shape of Puget Sound. Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana spread out before her in all their glory of folds and peaks and gorges and dry plains and river valleys.
Through the divided screen, light strings followed the thin chains of civilization along river valleys and into the mountains, only to spread into bright basins of light where cities flooded the landscape. She touched a button on the console and the landscape shifted into an overwhelming profusion of green-lit stereoscopic contours. She -reached-, farther afield than the watcher at the desk was intended to, and the deep pulsing boil of Yellowstone filled her with the almost narcotic glow of the earth’s power seeping up through the lithosphere. Pulled back a little because it would do her no good to be caught doing something wrong before she even had a chance to do what she intended.
At the touch of a button the chair whirred across the mesmerizing landscape toward Puget Sound and the long chain of peaks and valleys that ran the coast, and the glittering string of well-lit human habitation that clung there. When the chair hung over the dark bulk of Mount Rainier she stopped her motion, keyed in another set of map coordinates, and the scene below her shifted, swooped in on her hawk wings so that the Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia corridor sprang into detailed relief.
Rain-slicked streets and the dark waters of Lake Union, Lake Washington, and Lake Sammamish laid black ink on the glittering table of the cityscape. Vallon spread her hands flat across the console. -Reached-.
The cityscape shifted before her. Still the steep hillsides and treed neighborhoods of the city, but now she saw beyond what she’d come to think of as the thin veil of normal sight and the earth’s crust of flickering creatures, to the reality of the bright glow just beneath the boiling surface. This was where the Gifted lived, and the power source for all change.
Faintly, a web of capillary lines flowed under the city like veins under a person’s skin. Across the city, change bubbled, flared, and subsided again harmlessly as people dreamed.
Near the harbor at Pioneer Square, a more brilliant flare in the darkness showed where the flophouse/clothing shop vied for existence. Licorice flooded Vallon and her first instinct was to recoil. She stopped herself. Had to know. Let the licorice scent in and found….
“Dammit,” she pulled back to the war room and its recycled air, the delicate powder taste of roses on her tongue. Her taste. “Dammit, dammit, dammit, dammit.”
All she could hope was that Gleason and Moore wouldn’t notice it in the miasma of licorice. Fat chance.
A fountaining flare of power rose from the site like fourth of July fireworks and Vallon sighed in relief. She -reached- and the scent of Gleason’s old spice and wet earth power filled her head. Moore’s green-tea scent was a faint acrid aftertaste on Vallon’s tongue. Then the flare subsided into the green-tinged darkness of the city, and the fine web of the earth’s veins underneath.
No sign that the Gifted who had evoked the change even noticed the site had been changed back to the old brick flophouse, and that was a good thing. It supported Gleason’s contention that the changes were unplanned.
But the malevolence of the presence she’d battled at the flophouse didn’t support that. There’d been purpose there. And anger. And gloating superiority. She tapped her finger on the digital pad and the chair lifted higher. She needed to dig deeper, but first she needed to check on the other agents. Gleason and Moore were on the move—probably returning to the AGS—or hopefully dealing with their afterburn. If s
he were lucky, it would mean it would be a while before they arrived.
She set her ‘wings’ at her side and swooped across the city, seeking the glow of more permanent change. Out beyond the weight of the concrete that formed the University, Laurelhurst was an area of tall cedar and oak and spruce and spacious homes that housed many of the well-heeled of Seattle. The docks and boat moorings around the affluent point reminded her of a paramecium’s legs.
She honed in on the bright candles that were petite, dark Margarita Chavez and tall, Aryan Mark Ingersall near a lakeside household, the gold veins flickering in and out of her vision as the M and M twins addressed a brightness that, best as she could tell, reflected a swimming pool newly created between a glass-and-steel house and the yacht moored at the shore. As if these people didn’t have enough with their expensive view.
So the M and M twins were fine. Dealing with small potatoes given what Vallon had seen in the past few days. She pulled back and scanned the landscape, filtering through the tastes and scents that marked the presence of the Gifted in the population. Fi still rested at Vallon’s house. Good. Vallon turned to her last agent.
Janet Hunt and her mom’s-apple-pie-attitude and her basket of cookies. The leftover from another era who had always maintained her show of kindness even if Vallon didn’t believe it and didn’t respond.
Janet had worked with the company long before matters of homeland security brought the AGS to the attention of national security agencies. Then its major function was still confirming the accuracy of existing maps and ensuring borders were maintained. Before anyone noticed the rampant change percolating through the population. Or before it started.
Only Gleason and Janet were left from that era, and Gleason had shifted from Field Agent to Management when Roger Decker, the original head of the unit, had retired. But Janet and her old-fashioned, matronly ways still kept chugging along.
Vallon sighed and followed the flow of the landscape southward.
Janet Hunt. Her Gifted flare and scent of patchouli traveled southeast of Tacoma, past Puyallup and Buckley and along the edges of Mount Rainier National Park toward Wilkeson. Tracking earth tremors, Dean had said.
Occasionally the AGS did get involved in keeping surface seismic or natural disaster damage to a minimum. They’d done it with Mount St. Helens. They could have done it with Hurricane Katrina—if Homeland Security had taken up Gleason’s offer.
Mount Rainier was one of the most active volcanoes in the Pacific Northwest, so Hunt’s attention was no surprise, but her direction was.
There wasn’t any need to go to the mountain. An agent of Hunt’s ilk could track along the skein of earth capillaries as easily as Vallon did to find the source of the tremors. That was the purpose of the various computer consoles on the war room desks. Some of the agents even kept computers at home for the same purpose.
So something had forced Hunt out of her house and onto the road.
Vallon sank as deeply as she dared into her map, allowing the sensation of wet soil and tree roots to cover her skin, but there was no hint of issue there.
She turned her attention in the direction Hunt drove and hesitantly opened herself to the flow of power.
It hummed through the earth in a deep, subsonic symphony that shook her bones like afterburn until the pain almost jarred her loose from her body. This was why the AGS never went this deep. Too dangerous, they said. Agents had been lost.
Her hold on the power flickered and dimmed and she shook herself, pressed her hands back onto the desktop digital representation of the map below her and fell back into herself and the feel of wet earth—cold—and felt—heat?
Was something going on with the mountain?
Her awareness sought past Hunt’s squat presence guiding her Ford Focus through the rain-drenched night. A sense of the mesmerizing hiss of tires and flashing white lines and ‘Welcome to Wilkeson’ and then Vallon was past.
Was something not normal? Was the heat enough to get Mother Hunt out on such a night? The earth taste changed to salted sandstone and the anise of coal. Veins of it laced through the soil that had led to the creation of the town to begin with. From above came the weight of the small, two-story town, and the few hundred souls who slumbered the night away.
Something.
The soil suddenly warm as sun-heated clay that stuck to your hands. It coated her presence and made it hard to pull away. She came back to herself into the cool, artificial breeze of the war room’s circulated air and worked her hands against the sensation of clay hardened into her pores and mind.
The soil in March shouldn’t be so warm.
Vallon peered uneasily down into the map in the direction of Mount Rainier. She should really just let Janet Hunt do her job like Gleason would want, and focus on learning what she could of the flophouse change and whether it was connected to the change at the garage.
But Janet Hunt was out there alone and it was Vallon’s job to make sure nothing happened. Vallon picked up the phone to call her as she looked back at the map.
The fact Hunt hadn’t called in whatever it was she chased down said that she didn’t trust her suspicions and wanted more proof before reporting.
So let her do her job. You’d want that chance. Hell. You’d demand it.
Vallon put the phone down and surveyed the map.
The usual pop and flow of change close to the city like a slow-boiling cauldron. It was what had first drawn Gleason to shift the AGS to a landscape conservation role when Vallon’s father had pointed it out—or so the Academy text books had said.
City lights faded and bloomed. Landscape changes, little ones, flickered and died like reflections in the rain, each one a pathetic attempt to gain gratification in an ungratifying world. She could understand that. Most of the changes were as transitory—blooming and fading quickly—as her ill-fated relationships.
Something….
She -reached- and refocused her vision on the pale web of lines under the city and sent her awareness out. Where bright spots illuminated in the web, the same build-up of Gifted she’d seen the other night, and wondered how long those gatherings had been going on. Each lay in an area of more intense light where a group of the webbed lines came together.
When Seattle’s glass towers gave way to the old district of Pioneer Square, she tried to duck beneath the streets again, but something stopped her. She tensed, cautiously -reached- again and felt the tide water in the soil. A natural barrier. She followed it, touching the tunnels of Seattle’s underground, the sawdust and sewage of Seattle’s first town center. Drove inland and uphill to the place where power flowed again. Where the flophouse had been. Or was, now that Gleason had completed the restoration.
Vallon opened herself to the flow of power flavored with Gleason’s old spice and damp earth scent. Brick structure pressed on the folds of the earth, but here below there was something different. As she remembered.
Licorice in the soil, overripe and insistent as Maggie at her most hungry. Vallon -reached- further.
Heated soil surrounded her like a comforting shroud. She melted down through the soil, deeper than she’d ever gone. Deeper than the AGS had ever dared explore, but the licorice was generalized and almost impossible to trace.
Pulse.
Vallon jerked as the earth twisted around her.
Pulse.
And the web of power thrummed, undulated, and gathered.
Then the web of earth power flashed and shuddered, the power blinding Vallon.
She jerked upright, blinking, in her chair and found herself twisted to face the damned mountain.
“Shit.” She stabbed the controls and the chair hummed and soared and fell toward the Wilkeson area, but Vallon already knew. Already felt the change in the map. Already scrambled for vellum and pen.
Power churned and boiled from the earth near the mountain. Stench of licorice burned in her nose, her throat, teared her eyes.
Her palm slammed down
on the emergency alert, even as her other hand keyed in Hunt’s cell number.
The call-tone drilled through her headset and into her ear. Again. Again.
“Come on, come on, come on.” Why wasn’t she answering?
AGS staffers flooded the room. Gleason and Moore, slicked with rain, on their heels. Landon soon after, a bathrobe pulled around him, Gore-tex jacket over his shoulders.
Vallon’s world filled with double vision. Gleason and the war room. The too-warm earth under Wilkeson.
The cell phone’s ringer buzzed and she switched it to the room’s intercom. The digital readout showed Hunt’s name.
“What’s going on, Drake?” Gleason elbowed his way through the crowd of agents, Moore and Landon like elfin children at his giant’s heels.
Vallon steadied her breath, juggling the double focus. Be calm. She could deal. “Something’s happening at Mount Rainier, Sir.”
It came out crisp. Professional.
The war room began to shiver and shake. The tiles undulated under their feet and sent Vallon’s chair in a long, wild, sickening swing across the map that almost tore her from her focus. Her fingers automatically raced over the chair controls. The mad swing continued.
“Quake!” Gleason roared.
Perfect. Hunt had been tracking tremors and she’d found one. More than that, too.
Licorice scent rammed into Vallon and almost doubled her over. She. The scent clearly belonged to a she.
The chair. It was as if something else had taken control. In the war room the stench of burned wire vied with licorice for dominance and became a single stench of electric power.
“Drake, get that damned chair down!” Gleason roared.
She tore herself from Hunt’s location, toggled switches, slammed her fist onto buttons, but nothing worked. Nothing responded. Pen and Vellum went flying like missiles across the room.
In desperation she cut power and the chair slowed, slowed, lowered. Vallon heaved a sigh of relief, unbuckled to meet Gleason. Began to stand.
The chair jerked sideways, caught her on the thighs and knocked her back onto the console as the chair leapt up, away from the map, slammed through the crowd of Agents and underlings like a car through a crowd and barely missed Gleason’s head as Vallon struggled to regain her seat.
Too late.
The wall came up too fast. Impact drove Vallon headfirst into oblivion.