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Volume 2: Chapter 189 — Calling an Audible
🕑 Added 2023-07-02 00:17:14 +0000 UTCThere was a wall where there wasn't a wall. Dan stood in front a vertical plane of sheetrock, and ran his fingers across its dappled surface. It was a surreal experience, when his eyes and his veil reported conflicting sensations. This was clearly an unassuming corner of a small meeting room. There was nothing at all abnormal about it. Not his eyes, nor his fingers, nor the advanced sensors in his helmet, could find a single thing wrong with it. He swapped through a dozen different filters on his HUD; thermal, electric, x-ray. It was, for all intents and purposes, just a normal wall.
His veil told a different tale. The wall glowed to his senses. It was a tactile thing, almost warm to the touch as he brushed a thousand tiny tendrils over its glossy exterior. He had the distinct feeling of standing over the surface of a lake and staring down into its depths. He knew there was something beyond, but he couldn't see what. His veil poked insistently against the outer shell, giving Dan just enough feedback to confirm its existence.
Agent Carver was watching him; staring at him, really, except federal agents didn't stare. It was all in the posture. She stood like a looming grizzly bear, bow-legged and broad. The church staff cowered away from her as she surveyed the large office space that they were using as a lunch area. She'd already stomped around the room, scanning with all the same equipment Dan possessed. She would've come up as empty as he, except Dan had found a wall that wasn't a wall.
"Newman?" she prompted, managing to squeeze an entire question into the single word.
"There's something here," he said, over the squad channel. His veil was having trouble poking through, so he couldn't see insid—
Dan stilled his own head slap. He was an idiot. He bunched his veil up on the inside of his helmet, then ripped open a dime-sized portal into the room beyond. His Navigator, ever effective, gave him a bird's eye view of the interior. It was an unoccupied space, shaped almost like a confessional booth. Two empty slots, with a curtain in-between. There was another door behind one of the slots, leading somewhere else.
Dan consulted the blueprint again. None of this was listed.
Carver approached him, and rapped against the sheetrock with her knuckles. She tilted her head, listening closely, then shook it in frustration. "You're certain?"
Dan's veil snaked out of his portal and into the room. He ran it past the curtain and along the inner door. The hallway snaked suddenly downwards. Stairs, to a basement level. Where the cosmic generator was housed. He checked the blueprints one last time, just to be safe. There was no basement listed there. A number of things he'd forgotten, or disregarded, suddenly trickled back into his mind.
The Evo Church produced and sold its own upgrades. This was legal, more or less, through some complicated religious exemptions and a number of legal loopholes. But cosmic generators were really fucking scary, and the government kept careful track of them. If the Evo Church had a license to keep one underneath their headquarters, there is no possible way it wouldn't be listed on the federal paperwork. Meaning the one Dan had seen wasn't, as he and Abby had assumed, legally obtained.
"I'm certain," Dan said.
"Alright then." Carver tapped the squad channel and said, "Squad two, on me. We've got a possible breach location."
Dan watched on his HUD as a patrolling pair broke off, and hurried towards his current location.
"Is there a problem?" the church's—Dan didn't think escort was the right word; the man had basically invited himself along—chaperone asked, wringing his hands. His heavy robes were stained dark under the armpits, and the man's brow was slick with sweat.
Moments later, the two patrolling feds entered the room. The priest stammered something incoherent as the two approached the wall Dan and Carver were standing beside. The first of the pair repeated Carver's experimental tapping, tilting his head like a bird listening for prey. When he stepped away, his partner replaced him. He gave the wall a single, sharp knock, then looked to Carver for confirmation. Carver nodded her head.
The man put his entire arm through the wall. There was a noise like breaking wood, and suddenly there was a door where there once was a wall. The fed's arm was embedded up to his elbow in the door, and splinters rained down on the floor as he pulled himself free. He brushed himself off, then reached down to the door's handle and swung it open.
"Well now," Carver said, broadcasting her words openly to the suddenly petrified staff. "How about that."
Dan glanced to the chaperone.
"He's making a call," Dan noted privately. The man backed away, covering his mouth with one hand while muttering quietly.
Carver cackled. "I hope it's to a good lawyer," she said, as she entered the small confessional booth. She glanced around the edges of the room, noticed the lights in the ceiling, and tried the wall switch. It clicked up and down uselessly. "They've turned off the electricity to this room," she noted, and continued forward.
Carver shoved aside the separation curtain, and immediately noticed the door. She tried the latch, noticed it was locked, then simply ripped it off its hinges. Beyond the door, a stairway marched into darkness.
"A basement," Carver announced, just shy of gleeful. She flicked her fingers to the two accompanying agents, and directed them down the stairs. "Let's see what they're hiding, hm?"
Dan shifted restlessly. His veil swept down the stairs, searching for people or traps and coming up empty on both. This was a public space, which naturally limited defensive options. The Evo Church must rely on the loyalty of their cultists, and the relative privacy of the church, rather than any dangerous deterrents.
Carver watched her agents head down the stairs. Their outlines appeared on the helmet HUD, and she nodded in satisfaction. She turned back to Dan, knocking the back of her fist against his shoulder. "Good catch. Let's see what else you can find."
Dan followed her out of the cramped confessional and into a suddenly vacant meeting room. The chaperone was gone, as was the church staff.
Carver scoffed. "They aren't going anywhere. The exits are covered."
"The ones we know about," Dan noted.
Carver frowned at that, then keyed something on her wrist. She glanced back to the confessional booth, and the stairs leading down.
"An underground exit?" she murmured to herself, before shaking her head. "Nothing to be done about it. Better for us, even. Some kind of huge underground space will only harm the Evo Church, now that we're here to find it."
She wasn't wrong, but if everyone complicit in sheltering Charleston fled the building, they may never be seen again. Speaking of Charleston...
Dan opened a new door inside his helmet, to check in on the comatose villain. Instead of a dark room and a prone man, he found a pair of priests helping Charleston into civilian clothes. The door was open, the illusion was broken. Standing outside the room, a familiar face brought over a wheelchair. The church chaperone parked the chair against the wall and checked inside the room. He was sweating profusely, breathing hard, and shaking slightly. His breath came in a rattle as he asked, "Is he ready yet?"
"Five minutes!" one of the priests snapped back. "This is harder than it looks! He's like a dead fish!"
The chaperone growled, "We don't have time!"
"Then go stall them!" the other ordered, grunting in exertion as he lifted Charleston into a pair of sweatpants.
The chaperone anxiously bounced in the door frame, then spun on his heel. "Fine!" he said, and sprinted out of the room.
Dan snapped the portal shut, swung towards the exit, and said, "They're moving him. We have to go."
Enough fucking around with hidden rooms. The Evo Church could wait its turn. Dan came here for Edict.
Carver followed him out, asking, "How do you know?"
"I know," Dan replied. "I can feel it." His brisk walk turned into a jog, and he weaved through the remaining civilians, who gaped unashamedly at the armored agents moving in their midst.
They rounded a corner, and Dan plowed right into the church chaperone. The two men were roughly the same size, but Dan was wearing armor. The chaperone ricocheted off him like he'd been hit by a car, flopping onto the floor with a dramatic cry and landing with arms splayed. Dan staggered, glanced at the culprit, and immediately dismissed him.
He stepped around the man's prone form, but the chaperone gasped and clutched at Dan's leg. "You attacked me!" he screamed, holding on tight. "How dare you!"
The crowd around them shifted and stirred. Bystanders whispered to each other. A thrill of unease ran through them.
Dan glared down at the vile little man. "Do you think shouting something loud enough will make it true?"
"They all saw it!" the chaperone insisted. He gestured to the crowd, some of which looked distinctly uncomfortable at the sudden attention.
Carver stepped forward, seized the chaperone's arm, and peeled him off Dan with an effortless twist. She threw him to the ground, and said, "Our helmets have cameras on them, you moron. Now move aside."
"No!" the man cried, stumbling to his feet and swaying on his feet. "You feds are stomping around our home like you own it, abusing our shepherds and violating our flock! It's not right, and I refuse to be ignored!"
The man was stalling. It didn't matter how stupid his claims were, so long as they were loud enough to draw a crowd. The proper call here was to de-escalate the situation, before the crowd became a mob. He could see Carver relaxing her body language, readying herself to do just that.
"Fuck it," Dan said. He turned to carver and tapped his helmet. "These things have trackers, yeah?"
Carver paused, thrown off by the non-sequitur. "Of course."
"Good. Meet up with me when you can." Then Dan dropped into t-space, and emerged in the Evo Church's gym. He found himself standing outside the showers, right on the barrier between carpet and tile. He was facing inwards, towards the hidden bunk rooms. Three men were in front of him, and they all froze at his sudden appearance.
The two priests had shoved Charleston into a wheelchair, dressed as an invalid. He looked nothing like his picture, outdated as it was, with sunken cheeks and thinning hair and a horribly vacant expression. They could've wheeled him right out the front door. Nobody would've stopped them. Nobody would've known it was Eddie Charleston in that chair, emaciated and disabled as he was. But Dan knew him. Dan saw him.
"Hello Edict," Dan said, taking a step onto the wet tile. "Long time no see."
Comments
That Guy
Yaaaasss
