Obscure, p.4
Obscure, page 4
The woman on screen was sombre as she spoke into her microphone.
“… reported gas leak at the downtown de Lauer Estates. Maintenance crews were in the building when a fire started near the burst line, resulting in a blast that residents say they felt up to four blocks away. Police have evacuated a six-block radius, and emergency vehicles are on site. The number of casualties is as yet unknown.”
“Jet,” I said, my tongue unwieldy around my teeth. Casualties? Jet’s all right. She’s on the phone. She’s all right. “I don’t—what gas leak? What happened?”
“No gas leak,” she said, and I might as well have been talking to a robot. There was no trace of my best friend in her emptiness. “Bomb. Ghostbomb. It was a setup. My team…”
The sour taste of vomit oozed up the back of my throat as my stomach roiled. Her team? My brain couldn’t process most of what she’d said. All I knew was that I was here and she was there, and I wouldn’t feel calm in my skin until I saw her with my own eyes.
“I’ll be right there.”
“No,” Jet said, and for the first time I detected some inflection in her speech. “There’s no point. Michael’s here. I just wanted to tell you I made it out. I have to go.”
The line went dead, the silence less empty than her voice had been.
“Madison?” Melissa said, bringing me back into the room. “What do we do?”
I pressed my lips together, biting down to break through my shock, and did my best to rally. “You stay focused on the contract. Jean-Luc won’t care about windows in the face of whatever went on in that condo building, but once the dust settles, we better have answers.”
Retain a sense of normalcy. It was the only thing I could think to do.
Melissa left the room, and I rounded my desk, sank into my chair, and bowed my head into my shaking hands. Ghostbomb? It was so absurd that even though I couldn’t have misheard, I also couldn’t believe it was true. It would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars of ghost to turn it into an effective bomb. And why?
I kept my eye on the news, desperate for more information. Something the mundanes wouldn’t pick up on, the truth hidden somewhere between the lines, but the reporter added nothing of use. Finally, I spotted Jet stepping into the afternoon sun—her lieutenant, Eric Sampson, on one side of her; her commander, Colonel Michael Torrence, on the other.
I remained glued to the television, all thought of Obscuglas, Melissa, and my promise to Jean-Luc slipping away as I tried to tally what we’d lost.
And how much more we stood to lose once the queen found out.
Chapter 3
Jet
I sat on the curb in front of the evacuated building and let my phone drop into the grass beside me.
Although the safe zone for the public had been pushed back to a six-block radius, the crowd moving past me, around me, was too busy. Too loud. Everyone was shouting, calling out orders, reporting updates, securing the scene—and I sat by and watched. People spoke to me, and I didn’t bother trying to understand what they said. Everything was chaos, a mishmash of activity I couldn’t process.
Didn’t want to process.
Processing would mean accepting what I’d seen and heard. I couldn’t do it. Not yet.
And yet, there was Eric, standing with Michael, running through his version of events. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, but somehow he was able to say the words I couldn’t form.
The rest of my team—the lucky few—stood dumbly near the tactical van. Xander held a coffee cup, but I hadn’t seen him take a sip. Sara leaned against the side of the van with her arms crossed and her eyes closed. One might have believed she was unaffected by what had happened if it weren’t for the occasional uncontrolled spark between her fingers and the wobble of her bottom lip.
The only members of the pack who showed any outward signs of emotion were Adam and Katie, who clung to one another at the back of the van. I was glad they had each other. Other than myself, they were the only ones who’d had front-row seats to the entire execution, trapped in the tactical van, watching and unable to help.
“Dawson,” Michael said, coming up to me. I hadn’t noticed him walking away from Eric, but my lieutenant was now suiting up to go back inside, leaving the colonel with me.
He knelt down and bundled me into a hug so tight I could barely breathe, and that’s how I knew I was a mess. Since the day I’d started basic training, Michael had proved he wasn’t a sentimental, touchy-feely guy, so for him to fuss over me like a mother hen—checking my eyes, my skin, my fingernails for any sign the ghost had reached me—I must have looked a wreck. “How are you holding up?”
I knew I should put on a brave face, get to my feet, do what needed to be done. The voice in the back of my head—the one that had been with me since I enlisted, always pushing me to do better—shouted at me to be professional, be tough.
My body wouldn’t listen. The de Lauer building could have exploded right then, and I wouldn’t have found the strength to flee the flames.
With a sigh, my commander settled on the curb beside me. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“No,” I said, and the sound of my voice came as a shock. It was so distant. My brief conversation with Madison had been hard enough, and she’d been a disembodied echo on the phone. Speaking to Michael, hearing his unfamiliar sympathy, was an even greater struggle. “I have to stay here. I have to know—” how many I lost.
“I get it,” he said. “Do you want anything? Coffee? Glass of water?”
Deep within me, buried under the numbness, I bristled. “No, I’m fine.”
“What about one of those shock blankets? Something to warm you up while you wait.”
Did I look like a child? Some sad little creature that needed to be coddled? I clenched my teeth to keep from lashing out and didn’t bother to respond. This wasn’t Michael. This wasn’t my strict commander who called out every weakness until we faced it and defeated it.
He glanced at me sidelong. “Right, well, if you’re good here, we’re going to go in and see what we can find. All trace of ghost has been cleared from the lobby, but we’re taking precautions with the basement where the ventilation’s not as good. Sampson’s rigged up to the body cam if you want to hang out in the van and watch.”
I cringed. I didn’t want to watch through any more cameras. The sense of helplessness, the uselessness…
Michael cleared his throat. “It’ll probably take us a couple hours to get through it all, so if—”
“I’m going in with you.”
His grey eyes widened. “You most certainly are not. Be satisfied I’m willing to let you stay on site.”
“I can’t sit here and do nothing,” I said, and only when I got the words out did I appreciate how true they were. “I need to go in. I need to see for myself.”
“Dawson, think about this. You pushed yourself to the breaking point in there. If one of your troops did what you did, would you let them turn around and go back in?”
Of course not. “If they felt strongly enough about it, yes. But that doesn’t matter. I’m their captain. They need to see me on my feet.”
Michael eyed me, his hesitation obvious.
“Either give me an official order to stand down or help me get a suit,” I said.
My stomach twisted. I’d already vomited up most of the coffee I’d drunk this morning, but something in my insides refused to accept I was empty. I drew in a slow, deep breath, and on the exhale, as Michael nodded his agreement, my nausea settled.
He got to his feet, and I ignored his offered hand. I sensed my team’s eyes on me as I crossed to the SMOAC emergency vehicles, but other than a quick nod in their direction, I kept my focus straight ahead. Until I knew more, until I faced this, I couldn’t speak to them. As it stood, I had nothing to give but apologies.
As I went around the back of the tactical van, Jason approached me. His gaze cut to the crowd, to Michael, to something in his hands. I couldn’t avoid him, so I waited for him to reach me, and when he stopped at my side, turning his back to block anyone’s view, my attention landed on a scrap of paper between his fingers.
Without explanation, he handed it to me, and I scanned it over through blurred vision. Then I started at the beginning to take in what I’d read.
Time for silence over
Time to strike against the powers that promise us safety and security and fail us daily: SMOAC, unseen wall
name names. Top SMOAC brass: Bastien, Gagnon, dig website. Meril, anyone associated with her
We demand change, justice or we destroy the wall
Meril sacrificing her own people for immortality
Bastien supplying the sacrifices
repeat: change, justice, or the wall is next. Reveal to world supernatural exists
Today’s message the beginning. Smarten up or anyone with links to SMOAC/Meril is next
My hands trembled so badly that by the time I reached the end of the scribbles, I barely made out the last words. What the hell was I reading? Sacrifices? Destruction of the wall?
“Where did you find this, Master Corporal?” I asked through numb lips.
He nodded to the other side of the parking lot, where the original barricade for the street closure had stood. “It was lying on the ground. Like maybe someone dropped it on their way out?”
My head swam as I considered what would have happened if a mundane had found the paper instead of one of my team. The perception filter hid a lot of our reality, but a message this overt would have stood out.
They wouldn’t have seen. Wouldn’t have understood. Most of it is bullshit anyway. I tried to convince myself, but in truth, this tiny scrap of paper could have been catastrophic. A disaster we didn’t need so close on the heels of the one we’d been dealt. Worse than that was the warning it contained. Today’s message the beginning. If this bomb was the beginning, did we have to ready ourselves for more?
Anyone with links to SMOAC/Meril. What about someone with links to both? Was Madison in danger?
For her to be connected in any way to this insanity turned my blood to ice.
“Good find, Jason,” I said, impressed my voice sounded so level. “I’ll take it from here. Stand down. Take a walk.”
“Captain,” he said, and stepped away, looking relieved to have passed the message on.
Now it burned my fingers, in itself a potential time bomb if it fell into the wrong hands or didn’t make it into the right ones before whoever wrote it had time to act. My fingers tingled with the urgency, and I clutched the scrap tighter to avoid dropping it.
“Dawson?” Michael asked as he approached me with a suit.
“Hughes found this on the ground by the barricade,” I said as I handed it to him, as relieved to pass it off as Jason had been.
Michael read the scribbles, and his jaw worked as he clenched his teeth, his eyes hard.
“Left by the person who delivered the bomb, do you think?” I asked. “It reads like… I don’t even know. Like some kind of conspiracy theory. Sacrifices? Do you think whoever wrote this plans to publish it somewhere? Blog? Website? Is it syndicate, do you think? To what end?”
“Whoever wrote this won’t get a chance to publish it. We’ll make sure of that. Sacrifices, my ass. And naming names? Whoever wrote this is a coward who wants to discredit the department but won’t put his name on the byline.” He snorted in disgust. “Suit up if you plan to go in, Captain. I’ll make a call and set comms branch on this. If O’Malley is looking to stir up shit by posting these lies for the world to see, he’s in for a hell of a shock.” He shook his head. “All we need is one nutjob conspiracy mun to grab hold of this, and the entire internet will flood with the crap. Why would he take the chance?”
I swallowed hard and tried to add this note to what had happened in the basement. Was the message an idle threat to stir up trouble, or were we really in for some kind of revolution?
Was it possible today’s attack wasn’t a one-time hit?
Gods forbid.
While Michael got on the phone with the department’s communications branch, I obeyed his orders and suited up, fitting the respirator and face cover in place to protect me from any ghost lingering in the air. I felt like a marshmallow wading through sludge, but at least I’d be safe.
Unlike…
I didn’t let myself finish the thought.
Whatever the person who’d set up the bomb and dropped the paper had intended, they hadn’t succeeded. Not fully. I’d stopped the ghost, and we’d found the draft of the letter—blog post—whatever the hell it was. They’d only won a partial victory, and like hell if we would give them a chance to celebrate.
Madison.
The possible threat to her sat like a weight in my gut. Should I text her? Warn her?
Only make her worry.
I hated the way my brain worked sometimes, but it was true. If I texted her to say the syndicate was out to get her, she’d want to know more. She would dig, maybe even leave to come find out what I knew. Right now, she was safe at the office. The minister and her team would keep an eye on her. Later I would talk to her, reassure her I had her back. If she was a potential target for whatever the syndicate aimed to do, I would stand in their way.
For now, while I was sure she was out of danger, my team was my priority.
I refocused on the horror waiting for me and plodded towards the front doors.
The lobby carried a sense of abandon when I went inside. As though the last hour had sucked a hundred years out of the marble and leather. Everything had been sprayed down to get rid of the airborne ghost, so the polished sheen of the floor was covered in slurry and the couches were blotched with powder, water, and dirt.
Michael caught up with me, suited and masked, and together we found Eric waiting by the basement door. He started when he recognized me and squeezed my gloved hand as we passed into the stairwell.
“Joel took the bomb away,” he said, his voice echoing and distorted through his mask. “Ed and Yasmeen are working on the plastic wrap. Yasmeen believes it was put up yesterday, which is why nothing showed on the security footage.”
I thought of the illusions passing in front of the camera, the one living person waiting for us in the room who had winked out of view as soon as the truth had become clear. Weldon’s vanishing act had no doubt been another illusion, letting him slip by us unseen. Had he dropped the letter on his way out, stuck being the syndicate’s lackey?
Unfortunate for him it would mean a nasty end once we tracked him down.
We reached the bottom of the stairs, and I held my breath as Michael opened the door. The memory of Zeke walking through here not so long ago gripped my lungs, and it took me a moment to remember how to breathe.
I shouldn’t have bothered. The air left my body a moment later anyway when the full impact of the scene hit me.
The room was a bloodbath. Spray across the walls and ceiling, pools of it on the floor. My suit kept out the stench—kept out the ghost particles floating through the air—kept out everything but the icy hand of grief that squeezed my chest.
I cast it off, knowing how easily it could root me to the floor if I let it, and turned my mind to the work ahead. The fallen had to be organized, identified, removed. They deserved every respect I could provide. This was my final duty to them, and I wouldn’t fail. Not again.
Eric and I worked together, and with every lost soldier we shifted, I imprinted their name on my memory. I wouldn’t forget, and I wouldn’t let this go.
“Captain,” Ed said, and I turned to face him. He was crouched next to a hulking figure with a metal shield, dinged and blood-spattered, lying beside him. Zeke. “He’s alive.”
Chapter 4
Madison
The next hour passed in a blur.
Within ten minutes of Jet’s call, the minister was out of his office and rounding up anyone who had information to share. Rumours abounded. The syndicate had struck. A new big bad was in town. Inside job. Five people dead. Ten. The entire team. But very few facts trickled down the line.
When Melissa, Abigail, and Bruce came into my office to report their failure, I barely registered their frustration. The news replayed the same information, my phone remained infuriatingly silent, and, as far as I was concerned, Roy Desmond could go swim with the mermaids.
A few windows were the least of our worries right now.
The clock struck noon, and it was my turn to be summoned to Jean-Luc’s conference room.
Most of the team was already there—Deputy Minister Lucien Gagnon, two security officers, a full public relations team, and Phyllis. She gave me a sour look as I walked in, her grey hair pulled tightly back from her face, her powder-blue cardigan an inappropriate contrast to the sombreness of the meeting.
I ignored her and took a seat at the table opposite the minister. As his chief of staff, I had every right to be here.
My personal reasons for joining the meeting were no one’s business. I had to know what Jet had suffered.
Surreptitiously, I slid my phone onto the desk beside my notepad in case she checked in again.
“What have we confirmed so far?” Jean-Luc asked, calling the meeting to order.
Patrick McClennan, head of security, shuffled his papers. “We’re still waiting to tally the final numbers,” he said, “but we suspect at least half the team involved in the raid is dead. According to the most recent report, the recovery team pulled a few survivors from the basement. Six that we’re aware of have been taken to the Peaview.”
The Peaview was the only supernatural hospital in the national capital region, located in the second subbasement of this very building. I hoped that meant Jet would be here soon, safe and able to report in.
