March Forth (The Woodford Chronicles Book 1) (14 page)

Deanna

              They walked toward her apartment in companionable silence.  Deanna felt more lighthearted than she had in quite some time.

              When they reached her apartment, though, she felt a moment’s panic.  “What’s going to happen now?”

              “Whatever you like, my lady.”

              “You’re going to go away, though?”

              He smiled and shook his head.  “Only in this form. You can always find me if you reach inside.”

              She bit her lip, nervously.  “I don’t want you to go.  I feel safe with you.”

              “You are always safe, my Queen… as long as you choose to be.”

              She smiled despite herself, nodded, and said, “I had a feeling you’d say something like that.” 

              He shrugged.  “I only speak the truth,” he said, then bent over and kissed her forehead.  She felt his warm lips press against her head, and then, in an instant, he vanished.

              And she was alone again.

              Realizing time was of the essence, she ran into her apartment and put on the warmest sweater she could find, with jeans, several pairs of socks, and boots.  She put her warmest winter coat over all of that, with a hat, a scarf, and gloves.  She looked around for her phone, to no avail, but found a pack of cigarettes, which made her happy.  She grabbed her wallet, purse, and sunglasses, then ran back outside, and down the street, with no real idea of where she was going.  She was just going AWAY, away from anywhere she thought Steven and Larsen would look first.  Despite the comforting words of the robed man, she did not yet feel ready to face them; she did not feel confident in her ability to take control of the situation.

              After she ran a few blocks, she sat down on an arbitrary bench and lit a cigarette while she tried to collect her thoughts and form a plan.  She knew she should keep moving, but at the same time – why?  To go where?  They would be able to find her anywhere, wouldn’t they?

              “And yet,” she thought, “they can’t seem to find the Rasta Man.”

              That thought, at least, was encouraging.  If they couldn’t find him, maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t be able to find her, either.  Maybe, if she could figure out why the chance encounters she had had with him were important, she could figure out how to get them off her back.

              The last time she had thought about the Rasta Man, before all of this mess, was at the laundromat.  She had pictured him riding his motorcycle down a highway someplace warm and beautiful, and the thought had made her smile.  Even now, as she sat on the bench, she smiled at the mental picture.

              “The last place I really saw him, then, was in my imagination,” she thought.

              It was an intriguing notion.  A day ago, she would have thought nothing of it, but she had just taken a stroll down the street with some kind of embodiment of connection.  Anything, it seemed, was possible.

              “And I’m the queen of my world,” she murmured.  Then, she closed her eyes and began to release her thoughts, embracing her connection to the divine, as she endeavored to return to that memory.

Eric

              Eric sat in front of four separate monitors, studying them all as data scrolled past.

              As John walked by, he glanced at the monitors and said, “Well, she’s gone, did you happen to notice that while you were examining her molecules and whatnot?”

              “Of course,” Eric murmured.  “I think she’s back in Woodford, but she kind of disappeared once she got there.”

              “Don’t you think you should tell your buddy the General what’s going on?”

              Eric paused and glanced at John before answering, “I’m not sure.”

              “I mean….he’s gonna know soon, anyway.  Get the brownie points, bro.”

              “I’m…. not sure,” Eric repeated.

              “Oh, what,” John said casually, “you mean because of how he’s turning all evil about this waitress chick?”

              “You’ve thought so, too?” Eric’s voice sounded grateful.

              “I mean, yeah, bro.  I watched some of his ‘interviews’ with her.  And now he wants to erase her brain?  What the fuck is that shit?”

              “I’ve been really perplexed by his reasoning,” Eric blurted, relieved to get it off his chest.  “I understand he wants to find Carver, but this is… odd.”

              “Odd?  I was considering buying him a Darth Vader mask to accessorize his turn to the dark side.”

              Eric snickered, then frowned.  “I was kind of hoping it was just me.”

              “Nah, bro.  Anyway, how did she ‘kind of’ disappear once she got back to Woodford?”

              “Don’t really know.  She was there, then she wasn’t.”

              “Maybe there’s something funky going on in that town.  Carver was there, Steven found her there, and Larsen started going all evil…. Weird stuff, for sure,” John observed.

              “Yeah.  I…..” Eric trailed off and stared at his shoes.

              “Did you have something to add to that, or was ‘I’ really your main, take home point there?” John asked drily, after waiting fruitlessly for Eric to finish his sentence.

              “I might have… there could… I thought maybe I saw….” Eric stammered, then trailed off again.

              “I have no idea where you’re going with this, bro, but I’m riveted.  Let me know when you think you can make it to the end of the sentence.”

              “I-think-I-saw-Carver’s-energy-signature-in-the-waitress’s-molecular-scan-yesterday,” Eric told his shoes in one long breath.

              “Like…wait.  Like, her energy output is the same as his?”

              “No, hers was hers, and her molecules were all normal, but his energy might have been flickering around in her molecular structure for a second.”

              “Did you actually smoke crack before this happened?”

              Eric snickered in response, then shook his head.

              “I don’t know what that could even mean, bro,” John said, incredulously.  “I feel like we have to tell the General, ‘cause I just have no clue.”

              “Yeah, but… I’m not sure,” Eric repeated, hesitantly.

              “Right, the evil.”  John sat down heavily in a chair next to Eric and stared vacantly at the monitors, then said, “Well, shit.”

              Eric nodded morosely, and the two of them sat quietly in their confusion, watching a never-ending stream of apparently useless data scroll by on the monitors.

              “We’re gonna have to strategize a bit before we talk to the General,” John said, and Eric, having nothing else to say, stared at his shoes.

Steven

              Once Steven had spent what seemed like a fairly long time marinating in his anger, the door to the cell opened, and General Larsen entered, whistling.  When he saw Steven sitting alone on the cot, his whistle ended abruptly.

              “She stole my Broom,” Steven explained, flatly.

              “Oh, dear,” Larsen answered, with feeling. “How did she know how to use it?”

              “Because you really just have to push a button?”

              “But the focus, the direction… she couldn’t know how to REALLY use it.  Odds are, she’s back in Woodford.  That’s the only place her little mind would have been thinking of.  Chin up, boy, we’ll find her.”

              Steven nodded mutely, his mind still occupied by the many ways in which Deanna was clearly a bad person.

              Larsen pulled out his Wand and tapped away at the screen for a moment.  Suddenly, he paused and looked up sharply.  “Why didn’t you use your Wand to brief me before I came in here?”

              Steven blinked in surprise.  “Honestly, sir, I was so mad I didn’t even think about it.”

              “I see.  And how long did you sit here, being ‘mad’?”

              “I’m not really sure.  Twenty minutes?  Thirty?”

              “I see.  So, for roughly half an hour, Miss Flanagan has been on the run and neither you nor the techs felt the need to make me aware of the situation.”

              Steven’s knee began to shake.  “Well…yes, sir, I suppose that’s true.”

              “Does that seem like it was the best course of action, in retrospect?”

              “No, sir.  I suppose I let my anger overrule my sense of logic.”

              “Indeed.  Well, let’s go see what John and Eric’s excuse is.”

              They left the cell and walked through the empty testing room, down the hall to John and Eric’s private lab, which was a fairly chaotic room full of computers and devices in various stages of development.  There were a few band posters on the walls that John had hung, which, in combination with the general mess, gave the little room a similar ambience to the bedroom of a fourteen year old emo boy.

              Whenever Steven had previously visited the techs’ lab, he had found Eric working at one computer and John sitting across from him, more often than not playing video games or listening to music.  This was not the case today.  The two techs sat side by side in front of a computer that had four monitors set up, with data scrolling down each one.  Neither of them were looking at the monitors, though.  They both stared at Steven and Larsen.  Eric wore a look that could only be described as fear, whereas John had an air of forced nonchalance.

              “Oh, hey, guys,” John greeted them casually.

              Although Steven sensed there was something going on with the techs, he felt it would be better to stay quiet and let Larsen take the lead.  After all, if he had alerted Larsen to the situation as soon as it occurred, everything would probably be made right by now.

              “Gentlemen.  I assume you’re aware that Miss Flanagan has left us?”

              “Yes, sir, we know she’s back in Woodford maybe but she keeps disappearing,” Eric quickly mumbled to his shoes.

              “And did you think at any point that it might be a good idea to alert me to this situation?”

              Nobody said a word.  The silence was so heavy, Steven thought it could be described as crushing.

              “Gentlemen, that was a question.  Which implies that it requires an answer.”

              John and Eric glanced at each other, then Eric looked back to his shoes, apparently for their wise counsel.  Steven had never felt so awkward on someone else’s behalf.  He was therefore relieved when John started talking, though his relief died out quickly when he understood what the tech was saying.

              “Well, the thing is, General… the thing is… you know when Anakin kills all those kids in those godawful new Star Wars movies, and it doesn’t make any sense?  Like, he thinks the Jedi are corrupt and he has to protect his wife and kid, but then he just randomly kills a bunch of kids, and you’re kind of like, what the fuck?  It’s kind of like this waitress chick is your bunch of little kids.”

              There was a moment’s silence as everyone attempted to process this, then Eric told his shoes, “We want to be taken off this assignment, sir.”

              “I see,” Larsen said coldly.  “Because of a movie?”

              “No sir,” Eric said, finally looking up from his shoes and staring the General in the eye.  “Because of you.”

              “Yeah dude, it’s getting, just, like, uncomfortable,” John explained.  “I’m not really sure where you’re going with this whole brain-erasing business, but I feel like you should just leave this chick alone.”

              Standing behind the General, Steven could not see the man’s face.  He was fairly glad about that, just at that moment.  He could almost feel icy waves of anger emanating from his commanding officer.

              “I see,” Larsen said quietly, then turned slowly to look at Steven.  “And you, Drisbane?  Do you feel the same way?”

              “I…no…of course not, sir.”  As he said the words, he honestly hoped he was telling the truth. “I would never question your orders.”

              The General nodded once, then turned back to the techs.  “You do understand that if you’re removed from this assignment, all memory of it will have to be taken away from you.”

              There was a pause as the techs glanced at each other, then nervously, unexpectedly broke into laughter.

              “What, exactly, is comical about that?”  Larsen asked, his voice sharp.

              “Well, you see,” John explained, “you’d kind of need us to design the equipment for the procedure.  And we’re not going to do that.”

              As the general opened his mouth to respond, Eric picked up what looked like a souped-up Broom.  The round, black button was the same, but it was on a much longer base.  He held it up and mumbled, “We made this instead.”

              “And what, pray tell, is that?”

              “Insurance,” Eric said, and pushed the button. 

              Every device the techs had made, from the jumbled heaps of wires around the room to the Wand in Larsen’s hand, vanished.  Steven looked around, aghast, then experimentally felt in the pocket where he kept his SmartWand; it, too, was gone.  He glanced at Larsen and saw only seething rage.  He decided he had to act to diffuse the situation.

              “Guys.  Listen,” he began.  “There’s gotta be a way we can work this out.  Compromise.”

              John snickered.  “Doesn’t feel so great, being at someone else’s mercy with no real control, does it?  Welcome to our world.”

              “You’ve never been at anyone’s mercy,” Steven protested.  “You’re our coworkers.  You do your job, and we appreciate you.”

              “Listen, navy boy,” John continued, “maybe you think this shit is okay, but nobody is wiping any part of my mind away just so I can be off the assignment of torturing a waitress.  This is not what I signed on for.”

              “We just wanted to find Carver,” Eric interjected quietly.

              “Precisely, Eric.  That’s what we came to this organization for.  When we learned about David Carver, we wanted to find him and fix him and pick his brain.  We left fucking NASA because we thought we could learn more here.  Wiping away people’s brains was not part of the deal.  We just wanted to learn more about magic.”

              “Guys, come on.  We’re still trying to find Carver, but this woman has turned up, and could be connected to him,” Steven said, as soothingly as he could.  “That’s the only reason for all this.”

              “Really?” John’s voice was about four octaves higher than usual.  “You’re really gonna stick with that?” He gestured toward Larsen and squeaked, “He just berated her and abused her for how fucking long, because Carver?  Are you actually brainwashed, man?  Did he get to you first?”

              “I’m not brainwashed,” Steven snapped back, before pausing and trying to reel his anger in.  He took a deep breath.  “Look, even if you don’t approve of the methods we’ve been using or the reasoning behind this assignment, she has now stolen organization technology.  She has my Broom.  We can’t allow that to go on.”

              Eric brandished his own, Broomlike device and mumbled, “Not anymore.”

              There was a momentary hush throughout the room as that statement sunk in for everyone present.  Larsen broke the silence.  “Gentlemen, where has all of the equipment gone?”

              “Someplace safe,” John said, “where it will stay until we’ve had a little talk and worked on some issues;”

              “What sort of issues?” Larsen’s voice had become so icy, Steven thought he might actually feel colder upon hearing it.

              “Well, for one, when did we become bad guys?  How is kidnapping waitresses and brainwashing them going to help us find Carver?”  John’s voice sounded more agitated than Steven had ever heard him.

              “Why are you so certain she’s connected to him?” Eric asked quietly.

              Larsen heaved a sigh.  “We’ve been over this.  There is no such thing as coincidence.  She somehow, by accident, managed to meet him, then Drisbane found her.  Her ability to see through his shields is an obvious red flag.  There’s something going on with that woman, and we need to get to the bottom of it.  She met him!”  He yelled the last part loudly enough to make all three of the other men jump.  “She met him, when we’ve been searching for him for eighteen years!”