I drove my own car back from headquarters to my apartment. My apartment. I love the sound of that. Most of my life to date has been spent living out of a room in a lab complex. One that locked me in at night, like a jail cell… or a kennel. It was pretty big, and I had decent furniture and electronic entertainments, but it was still a cell. Then I lived with Mother when we were on the run. Freedom, but so, so not fun.
Mother was arguably more militant than the soldiers who guarded and trained me. Living at Arcane was my first taste of true freedom, but then I had to share a room with Jetta Sutton. Now don’t get me wrong. Jetta is great. She is a no-nonsense girl, completely besotted with weapons and combat training but still able to help me learn all the little ticks of modern society that my Agents in Rebus trainers had completely missed.
Things like girl code, makeup, and fashion, although she wasn’t a slave to either, and how to interpret and handle basic social interactions with people our age. That last was key because my trainers all taught me to act like an adult and missed the whole kid thing completely, which made me stand out like a sore thumb. See, there I go using an old person comment… sore thumb. What person my age would say that? None, but hey—I’m still a work in progress.
But as much as I love Jetta, I still need my own space. Notice the use of the L word. See how much I’ve grown since the whole test tube and beaker scene? Jetta is like my sister, which is why I have such good intel on him.
But back to my apartment.
It’s nice, a one-bedroom in an older but refurbished apartment complex with in-building laundry, really good internet access, and it’s close to food and restaurants. Nothing fancy, but clean, well-maintained, and affordable.
I parked my car (my own car, but we’ll get to that later) between a newer Jeep Wrangler and a 3 series BMW. Both cars are owned by guys on my floor and I normally park as far away from them as I can get, but this time of night, the open spots were limited.
I’m on the third floor, which is great, just an easy couple of flights of stairs, although most of the people on my floor complain about it. Soooo many stairs to climb, sooo tired of hauling stuff up them. Which is just stupid because they all use the elevator and then they all go out and spend money on a gym membership. I take the stairs, run on the streets and sidewalks for free, and use the Bureau fitness facilities. Cheap, like my rent. I don’t need pools, fitness centers, clubhouses, multi-use rooms, or in-complex coffee shops. I’d rather spend my hard-earned government paycheck on quality gear and weapons while saving up a hell of an independence fund. Jetta calls it an FU fund. Having lived with just Mack, her older brother, since losing her parents, being independent is vital to her. Another way she’s similar to me.
The door unlocked itself as I approached, which was more a function of my nanites than the keyfob that each unit used. I’ve made a few modifications that management probably wouldn’t approve of.
I pushed the door open with my shoulder, as my left hand held my go bag and my right was carrying tonight’s take-out order from my favorite Italian place. The apartment was a little dim to my eyes, probably full dark to regular humans, but just late-afternoon gloom to mine. Mother does excellent work, which is why I instantly spotted the face staring at me, bringing up the last point in favor of this apartment complex. They take pets.
“Hello Talon,” I said.
My big marmalade tomcat rumbled an immediate purr of welcome, advancing to twine himself around my legs.
Mother had kept him for me when I was at Arcane—cats and werewolves don’t mix. But now, I am fairly certain that all three of us are much happier that I have my own place.
“Is it dinnertime, fur face?” I asked.
Talon immediately butted my leg with his big, broad head. Dinner is a word he knows well.
I rescued Talon from deep inside the old missile silo that AIR had taken over as, I kid you not, a secret lair. The craziest thing about Talon is that I think he belonged to my nemesis, Agent Miseri; a truly shocking idea, as she was the coldest bitch I’ve ever met. She made my mother seem warm and friendly.
Anyway, my cat was bundled inside a carry bag that Miseri had on her when she came to kill Toni Velazquez. Declan and I killed her instead, keeping Toni safe, which turned out to be really important. I mean, as I understand it, it’s important to keep little kids alive in general, but this little girl was the goddaughter of God’s Warrior on Earth. And he’d been majorly pissed off when he found her in that cell. So pissed off, he’d somehow bombed the remains of the base with a decent-sized space rock. I shudder to think of what he might have done if he’d found her dead.
The tiny kitten I’d found in that bag had grown into a pretty big lump of muscle, fur, and claws, with a pretty strong independent streak of his own.
I think he must have been a stray and somehow touched the withered, barnacle-encrusted lump of dead flesh that Miseri had called a heart. I say that because he’s never taken to being just an indoor cat. Talon needs his outdoor time too. Which is why the door to my apartment’s tiny balcony has another unregistered modification. A cat door, one that only opens when it identifies the RFID chip implanted under my kitty’s skin. You might wonder what good it does to have your cat go out on a third-story balcony the size of a commercial jet’s toilet. But Talon doesn’t stay on the balcony. He leaves it at will. And that’s as much as I know. I’ve come home and found him gone from the apartment and the balcony, only to have him stride through the cat door ten minutes later, crying for his dinner.
Believe me that I’m dying to know where and how he gets off that balcony, but I haven’t had the time to solve that particular mystery, as the Bureau has kept me hopping.
But between the fully stocked long-term pet food feeder and the self-filling water bowl I have set up, I can leave on a mission for several days and not worry about him, knowing he’s fed, safe, and not stuck inside a locked apartment. It works for us.
But unlimited dry food isn’t near the same as the good stuff, so I immediately cracked open a can of the best quality cat food money can buy (and that’s another place I’d rather put my money).
With fur boy fed, I opened my own chicken parmigiana feast and we both settled into dinner.
After, with the mess cleaned up, I restocked my go bag with clean clothes, hung up my suit, and checked my weapons, getting everything ready for the next day or the next call out. After all that, it was time to check my weekly schedule. Tuesday night. Vacuuming night.
Jetta started the habit at Arcane—a dryboard set up with the days of the week and a division of the few cleaning chores we had. She called it adulting—the stepping up and tackling of grown-up chores. To me it just fit the mostly military discipline I had been raised under. But housecleaning wouldn’t slow down my other project for the evening.
“Omega, what have you found?” I asked over the whine of my Dyson. Talon took off as soon as I powered it up, that vacuum being his number one enemy in the world.
“Numerous emails, text messages, and recorded conversations that question the reality of the Vorsook. I have concentrated on high-level federal government leadership, as the sheer volume of state, municipal, corporate, and personal discussions far exceed our ability to investigate. However, I have found the initial vector of all this viral social engineering, which should make it unnecessary to follow those additional trails.”
I paused the Dyson. “You’ve already identified the source?”
“My apologies if my comments misled you. I have identified a series of communications that may have originated the initial skepticism and suspicion that the Vorsook are not real. Approximately three and one half months ago, comments on several news agency and blog sites took on a decidedly questioning tone. Numerous usernames were used but the verbiage and sentence construction showed too many commonalities to be unrelated.”
“So someone started a grassroots campaign to plant the seeds of suspicion using multiple usernames?”
“Essentially. The commentary spread across social media and blog sites, carefully worded to question while avoiding outright accusations of fraud. The activity was persistent and pernicious, eventually convincing enough individuals, who for various reasons were predisposed to buy into conspiracy theory belief structures, that by now the activity has become self-sustaining.”
“Do you have any theories?”
“Psychological and propaganda campaigns have been a proven strategy for as long as man has walked on the planet, and before. My time in direct conflict with a Vorsook AI has shown me that these techniques predate man.”
“You think the Vorsook are behind it?”
“I have insufficient data and evidence to lay this problem directly at their feet, but it would be heinously negligent to ignore the very real probability of their involvement. Everything I have learned about this race indicates that a strong cultural inclination to achieve victories with as little actual investment of resources as possible. It is almost a form of entertainment with them and bears a strong resemblance to the Fairie game of manipulation.”
“Convincing humans that they either don’t exist or aren’t a threat would weaken our responses, helping them win. But to do this, they would either have to have direct input into our internet or have control over humans who act as internet influencers,” I mused.
“It will require human-to-human investigations. Your unit would be ideally suited for this task.”
“So you’re agreeing with Agent Jay that I should stay with the task force,” I said, making it a statement rather than a question.
“Affirmative. Your skill set will be invaluable if in fact this action is tracked back to the Vorsook. I have conveyed all of this information to Agent Jay, as well as the location of the initial internet posts: Philadelphia. ”
I had pretty much already reached the decision that I had to stay on with the Bureau. Much as I had come to hate the bureaucracy of the FBI, staying put would be the best use of my abilities and skills. And Omega had just handed me a big bonus—I’ve always wanted to see Philly. One of the werewolves at Arcane had raved about their cheesesteak sandwiches. Looks like I might have a solid shot at trying one… or several.