Crystal Core Read online

  “Yes. I’ll walk you in, if you like? I know the situation… This whole thing is a mess.”

  Which it truly was. For one thing he wasn’t certain who they were there to arrest. The man who’d confessed to crimes, or the people that had forced him to do it.

  Chapter six

  Willum was troubled. Rather, he feared he was possibly in trouble. Maybe having a meltdown or genetic problems that were affecting his mind. Only holding his thoughts totally still allowed him to get through the actions with the local guard. The police.

  The men did take the reporter away, with Cindy laughing, if only after they left the building.

  “Well, that won’t do much, will it? The arrest. Right now… I think that our problems with that particular hate monger are about over. Even making a claim of Infected powers being used to force his confession he’s sunk. I mean, the women really exist. True, grabbing a bit of ass on occasion shouldn’t really ruin him for life, but it will, right now.”

  She seemed more or less happy with that.

  Willum, however, couldn’t love the idea. The man was, more or less, innocent. Even if he’d flirted with inappropriate women, that shouldn’t have him destroyed in the eyes of the public there. Except that it seemed the rules allowed for that. A thing Will hadn’t really realized before that moment. No one had ever mentioned it to him before.

  Then, no one there did that kind of thing, day to day, either. They were free enough about dating and sex, certainly. In his time there no one had abused him that way however, feeling his body without permission. It had happened in Noram, on occasion.

  Cin, her eyes moving back and forth, clearly reading something, winked at him.

  “That isn’t perfectly true. Bridget does that kind of thing all the time. She still grabs my behind half the time when we meet. She isn’t even into me, so go figure on that part. The same is true with you, you just don’t whine about it. It really is pretty much just normal. People touch other people all the time. Even I get that one.” She put her hand on his shoulder, and squeezed a bit.

  “But, the crazies have made a world where accusations are enough to convict in the court of public opinion, so we might as well use it.”

  Willum snorted a bit.

  “That isn’t exactly justice, is it? Not that the world runs on that. None that I’ve been in for long at least. Humanity is…” There was a thunk, which when he turned around was Marcia Turner. Her hand had tapped the doorframe of her office. The armor under her skin had hardened on contact, making it sound like a rock had hit the wood there.

  When he turned, she took a deep breath.

  “Well, this has been a fun day already. Then, no explosions so far, so it can’t be all bad. Anyway, Will, I wasn’t expecting you any time soon. Can we help you with something?”

  That got him to nod. It took work though, since everything was kind of grating on his nerves at the moment.

  “I’m on holiday. Vacation? I brought some things for all of you first. That magical gear that Taman assigned me to make for you? It’s in Cindy’s office.” He waved in that direction, as if she might not know where that was. It was foolish of him. The director knew where her people worked. Especially when it was less than twenty feet from where she was all day long. “Oh… I also should talk to you when you get a chance. We could take a walk? It’s raining right now, but that’s a good excuse to try out the new shields. They’ll keep that off of you.” He sounded tired, even to his own ears.

  A thing that hadn’t really happened in years to him. Even before the changes had been made. Except, when he focused on it, his body felt fine. His energy was like it always was. It was only his mind that felt sluggish.

  A state of being that shouldn’t really be possible. Yet, there it was.

  Director Turner brushed at her curly brown hair, smiling lightly. It was a lot friendlier than Willum actually recalled her being before. A lot less like she wanted to have him locked up for being there in the first place and more… Like it wasn’t that big of a problem.

  “Sure. Why don’t you walk us through the new gear, first?” Her voice was soft. Almost gentle.

  Then, he had gone into a combat rage not long before. That was how you were supposed to deal with things like that, when they happened around you. It was even part of the rules about the topic. You didn’t make direct eye contact. You spoke in gentle tones and you didn’t push the person to do anything, in particular.

  All things that Turner shouldn’t know about at all, really. Cindy Mableton however had spent months, several of them, in Noram. Around nobles the whole time. That would mean someone had told her about that kind of thing. Or, given who she was, that she’d learned of it on her own, her powers pulling the ideas from the stories of their lives.

  The very idea boggled Will’s mind for a moment. The whole IPB world did. From the incredible powers of some of their people to the fact that they had a form of recreational entertainment based on cooking. The very concept was insane. Not evil or bad, just crazy on a level that made him want to not think of it as real.

  Walking to the three floating black boxes, he gestured to the amulet on the top.

  “If you carry that with you, the boxes will follow you around. If you push the glowing blue sigil on the front of it, you can think about where you want each box to go and it will float there. It has a limited range. About half a mile, so keep that in mind.”

  Taking it carefully by the hemp string it was on, the device was passed to Marcia. Then the chest closest to the door was opened, showing it had six compartments inside of it. Each filled with different tan and green focus stone tiles. They all had glowing sigils on them, but the ones he used were simpler than most. Plain in a way. For instance, the clothing amulets had glowing brown, showing a simple pair of trousers, a tunic and boots. No person in them, just the clothing.

  The shields just had a red, round, shield on it. The old-fashioned kind. Cin looked at them all and started naming things, getting the basic idea.

  “Clothing, shields, lances?” She looked at him, since she wanted him to explain the concept out loud.

  “Yes. Force Lances. They pretty much just push whatever they hit. Really hard. You can kill a person with one, but you can also use them to just knock people down. Aim at the legs for that.”

  Director Turner nodded.

  “Nice. So, we have a disguise? The beard, glasses and hat?”

  “Exactly. Oh… We should. Can we borrow Penny for a bit?”

  Brent the newsperson had been right about that. The woman was so invisible that regular makeup couldn’t really fix all her issues. What he was bringing in just might, however. Plus, it would be easier to take off, if she needed to fully vanish, for some reason. Faster to put back on, as well.

  Turner called out.

  “Cooper. We have a job for you. Over here.”

  The woman actually jogged a bit, being very polite, it seemed.

  “What can I do for you?”

  Cin looked at him, her eyes telling him that he needed to take over, for some reason.

  Looking at the invisible lady, her hair dyed and face caked with makeup, he gestured for her to step closer.

  “We have some disguise magics. They should be easier for you to use than makeup. Better. I want to see if you can use it to color your teeth, gums and tongue without discomfort.” He knew it could work that way, as long as she held it to the surface and didn’t try to add apparent bulk. That worked for changing what you looked like, but wasn’t needed for this, he didn’t think.

  The woman just gave him a wary look then. As if he was teasing her, for some reason.

  “Fine. Let’s do it?”

  That took a mirror, which meant moving to a different room. It was a space that had several big mirrors in it, as well as a table and in the center of the room a chair. That was different than anything he’d seen before. It was padded and probably comfortable, but seemed strange, being metal at the bottom. There were pedals as well. Behin
d where the person could reach with a foot, sitting in it.

  Waving at it, Penny explained.

  “It’s a makeup chair. It goes up and down, so the makeup artist can reach you easily.” There was some hand waving, which was approximating how that was done.

  “Oh? That’s new, at least for me. Then, I’ve never worn makeup. Anyway, here, put that on? It helps to have a mirror. Once activated, you just need to concentrate on what you want to happen. Try not to get too crazy, at first. Once it’s set, it will stay that way, on the surface of your body.”

  Getting it to work for her actually took about twenty minutes. The woman was able to make it function, so it wasn’t a lack of any sort. It was mainly that she kept changing her hair color at first, instead of fixing the rest of things. In the end Cindy got her to pay attention to the task long enough and she was covered very realistically in colors that made her seem made up, but like a regular woman. Not one that couldn’t be seen without covering all over her body.

  She finally licked her lips and then wrinkled her nose.

  “This works! I should get one of these… Um, hint, hint? It’s nowhere near my birthday, though.” She glanced at the box, slyly. As if taking things was a good plan.

  Director Turner just waved.

  “Keep that one. I want a list though, of what we have and who has it. You’re in charge of that, Cooper. Get with the Agents side of things on this as well. Those shields alone should make anyone wearing one a class four.”

  That, finally, meant something to him. Thinking about the class system, he tilted his head back and forth.

  “A four or five, really. They have flight capabilities and that can be useful in a fight, if you aren’t easily hurt. No weapons on them directly, but we have the other things. Even some explosive weapons. Nothing too large though. Also the rest…”

  It took nearly an hour to go over it all, since they needed to be demonstrated. That included lessons in flying, which interestingly, Cindy handled for them. After a fashion.

  “Get Felicia to teach people? The shields are basically her power, now.”

  That wasn’t new to Willum, having felt it on the tiny version of his Aunt Taman before. Thinking about that, he smiled.

  “Oh… I see… I wouldn’t have expected that.”

  Everyone looked at him then, as if he were being strange. Which was fair, he had to consider. Just saying things like that without explaining was an annoying habit.

  “It’s just… Felicia isn’t this world’s version of Taman Baker. She’s Tam-Unit. The magical boxes that run the world’s space ports. She has a body as well, but again, it’s made of magic. It never occurred to me before that energy people would be represented that way. I… It’s different. Tamu is a person made entirely out of magic. Like Riggs’ friends?” The man, who looked most often like a toy animal, a teddy bear, did things like that almost all the time. Making people from his ability and imagination. It made him incredibly powerful. Probably more so than almost anyone else in the IPB, except for little Sara.

  Cooper reached out and took his hand. Which was close, considering they didn’t really know each other. Then, he had just given her a fairly nice present. That could be taken as a courting gift, he supposed.

  “That sounds different. Thanks for all of this stuff. I’ll get a list made. We need a place to keep it. Is it fine here for now?”

  Turner nodded.

  “That should work. Mableton is slated to get off to D.C. for yet another cluster of a Congressional meeting. At least this time it isn’t about you, directly. It’s about nuclear weapons.”

  Cindy closed her eyes.

  “Well, that doesn’t fit my current plans. I was going to spend some time with Willum here. I tricked him into thinking that I was girlfriend material and kind of wanted to work that angle for a bit, before he realizes that psychopathic blondes are horrible for things like that. No one has explained the hot-crazy scale to him yet.”

  Director Turner winced, but made a pained expression come to her face.

  “We really can’t get out of it. It was short notice, but you found them all, which makes it fair for them to ask about it. I…”

  Snorting, feeling like he wanted to lay down and not move for a long while, Willum patted Cindy on the back.

  “I’m sure I can find something to keep me busy. Besides… I’m not really… I don’t know. I think something is wrong with me.” Explaining it was too hard for the moment.

  It also wasn’t required. Cin did it for him.

  “That. It isn’t the genetic changes. That’s fine. You even know it on some level. It’s the grind you’ve been living with. Well, possibly the part of things where you never get to sleep. We don’t think of it that way, but that’s the process that kind of wipes everything away each day in mammalian brains. Not sleeping means you never really get to reset fully. Even going into the void isn’t doing that for you. It’s mainly the first part, just to be clear. Constant stress and work, for months on end.”

  “Oh? Is that why…” It wasn’t polite to bring up combat rage. Sometimes needed, anyway.

  “Exactly. It will probably get worse if you don’t figure out a way to let off some steam, occasionally. That part, well, you’ll have to find it for yourself. Work isn’t going to cut it. Maybe steam baths?”

  He didn’t know what that was. No explanation came for it either. That hopefully meant it wasn’t the perfect fix for him, since he didn’t feel like asking about it. Doing anything just seemed hard, suddenly. Which was probably a thing everyone else had been seeing in him for a while. Hence sending him away.

  Not because he was useless, but because he was about to become that way, if he didn’t manage to change what he was doing. Which, thankfully, had come at the right time. They had a way of, at least possibly, protecting themselves from attacks now. From the sound of it, they were pretty safe from being removed from reality, at the same time.

  That meant his personal job, spying, was probably done already.

  If he died, or went insane, then it wouldn’t matter.

  Rolling her eyes, Cin smiled at him.

  “Or you could just relax and unwind for a while? Probably more than a month. We should go and eat again. Unless I have to leave first?”

  The woman said the words as if she didn’t know the answer already. The thing was, even feeling a little out of sorts, Willum understood that she had the answer from Marcia in her head. That meant the words were all about letting him know that, without seeming like it was what she wanted to be doing. It was very clear that she had to leave in the next few minutes, in fact. They had a craft waiting for her. A plane, they called them.

  Ms. Turner shook her head, and started to speak. The interesting thing there was that her thoughts were rather gentle, toward him. Cin as well, though there was a bit more practicality when she focused on Mableton. With him it was just… Almost as if she didn’t want to bother him, or take the fun out of his vacation.

  A thing that she thought he badly needed. Honestly, it was clear from her field that the woman thought he needed to be retired already. Taken out of service and sent home.

  No one mentioned that part to him, however. What he might need, and what the war effort did were two different things.

  Instead she made a face, her decently full lips pulling upward. It was a grimace, if a small one.

  “Not this time, I’m afraid. You’ll probably be back in… Six days? You get a month off though, right, Willum?”

  “Yep. Which is three and a half days, here. I really should go and see some people, anyway. I’ll be fine.” It was disappointing, but he really would live. After all, for all he knew that was the way having a girlfriend went in life. You proclaimed the thing, then didn’t see each other for weeks or longer.

  It was kind of how his fake marriage had been going.

  He stopped then and looked at both of them.

  “Right! I nearly forgot. A reporter mentioned wanting me to do an interview with
him? I told him to call Penny to set that up. That’s answering questions while sitting, isn’t it? I guess I should stick around here for that. Only… I don’t know how long that kind of thing will take.” The visiting idea was half baked at best, so could be put off if there were important things to do.

  Duty came first. Always.

  Cin looked over his head, a warm and slightly tickling feeling casting over him as her eyes moved back and forth. Reading all about his mind and thoughts. Or, at the moment, reading up on the contact he’d had with Brent earlier.

  After half a minute, she grinned. Seeming actually happy for some reason.

  “He’s not thinking it will happen at all, even given what you said. Really, if you talk to him in the next five months, he’s going to be pretty happy. Especially if you pick him first. He’s just a local news person. An interview with a man from another world is going to go national, making it a big deal for him, if you agree to it. In short, don’t worry too much about sticking around for the next three days, waiting for him. I’ll talk to Penny about it.”

  The words got Director Turner to shake her head.

  “I’ll do that. You need to get your gear and move to the tarmac. The plane leaves in about forty minutes. Baker, you wanted to go for a walk?” From the thoughts coming from her, it was clear that she didn’t know what that might be about.

  That her brain didn’t force her to consider it a physical attack first thing, or some trick to get her out of the office, was amazing. She’d had that part of her reduced enough that, while she was careful all the time now, the lady was willing to assume he didn’t want anything bad. Which was simply true.

  “That would be good. Let’s get you one of those shields. Really, I want Cindy to have one as well, before she goes. If that plane falls from the sky, it will let you fly.” A thing that he’d never actually done, himself. He’d had a shield on for months, off and on at least, but simply propelling himself into the air had never been a thing he’d had time to try.

  Which got him to smile as he moved to the correct case, getting the amulets out. The women each took one of them, which got tucked around their necks instantly. They only had a hundred of them, meaning most of them were going to need to go to the human Agents, since they didn’t have any powers, personally. The magics weren’t fool proof, in the world they were standing in, but they should help a lot, if the men ever had to fight an infected person.