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Asunder (The Infected: Ripped to Shreds Book 3) Page 6
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Jogging, she moved a bit more quickly than seemed reasonable. Like she was sprinting to be honest. Over the course of a half mile, or possibly a little less, she hit about a hundred miles per hour. It didn’t feel hard, but when she stopped, her boots sliding more than a bit on the dirt outside the Agents headquarters building, she grinned. Jogging wasn’t exactly the word for that kind of thing. Yes, she could have gone faster, but the truth was she’d kind of pushed things.
On the great side, it made it seem like she actually cared about getting her job done. She didn’t really. Not the one she was on at the moment. Her real goal, Anthony Levitt, was escaping her. Or more to the point, not providing her with the data she needed about his super-secret organization of psychos. It was starting to piss her off, but she got it. Whoever they were, the people involved were careful. It was probably why they still existed.
If what little she got from Tony counted for anything, they’d been around for a long time. At least a thousand years. That kind of meant that they were more than due to be exterminated. At least to her mind.
She stood for a bit, catching her breath. Gasping hard for about two minutes, before entering the brown door. Inside the place was kind of normal seeming. There were rows of desks, with at least six men dressed in all black outfits inside. Suits and ties. All in the same colors. Even their haircuts matched, more or less. One of the men was bald on top, but other than that it was kind of eerie. The top of their heads was collectively flat.
As in, she could have balanced trays of food on them.
Which got her stomach to growl, since she needed to eat more again. Soon.
Instead of acting like she was a bitch, even if that was more or less true, she faked a smile for the men there, and waved. The cute part was that one of them did it back. The Latino guy. Reyes.
“Can I help you, Ms. Mableton?” He knew he was being charming about the whole thing, and kind of hoped that Cindy didn’t take it the wrong way.
Not that he didn’t think she was cute, or had an issue with the Infected. Not most of them. It was all about the fact that he was recently married and didn’t want to ruin that. Even if he did kind of want to get laid by every cute woman he met.
Like most men, Cindy knew.
“I’m here to report about the little dust up earlier? I need Burkes, and to get with Lancaster. I know, technically not in your department now, but those two have a mission. We might as well cover it all at once.” It was true enough, and oddly the man smiled at her over it. As if that was a good thing.
Lancaster’s first mode was basically a tight focus on his job, now that he’d been hit. His old job, as an Agent. A thing that had been taken away from him by law. It was making things harder than it should have been, by Reyes’ way of thinking.
“Burkes is through that door. I’ll see if I can get Lancaster in here. I think he’s on the range right now. With your new guy? Um… Baker?”
That was interesting, since Cin had figured he would have gone home with his Uncle, given the fight that had taken place. When she checked, she found that he was back however, and working away, trying to learn new ways of fighting. It was, among other things, what he was there for. Learning to do things in ways that wouldn’t track directly back to his own world immediately. That, and work with Hobbs.
After all the man was good at his job. One of the best, when it came to fighting.
Interestingly, Will had also roped Lancaster into teaching him things. Mainly firearms and tactics. The military kind. It was kind of impressive, since the boy managed to seem like he should have been getting dates constantly, instead of working twenty-four hours a day. Not just because he was cute, either, it was actually part of his plan to fit in.
She nodded, after a pause that was far too long to seem normal.
“I was checking up on Will. Good call, on the firing range. Thanks, Reyes.”
She moved to the door over to the right, and knocked a few times. It was open, but the man inside was on the phone, talking to one of the remote stations. The agents had something like a thousand of the things. The IPB wasn’t a huge operation, but most of the people in it weren’t Infected at all. They were highly trained regular peeps. The ones that were the real point of the spear when it came to controlling the Infected menace.
Interestingly, none of the men there in the office thought of them that way. Cindy kind of did, but then she’d been a serial killer not long before. It sort of made sense to her that not all Infected were good and sweet all the time.
A bit absently, Burkes waved for her to come in, his mind splitting on the pages over his head, working on the problem that the phone presented with most of his mind. A part of him also tried to figure out what Cin was doing there at the moment.
Cutely enough, a little sliver of his brain wondered if she were there for a date. To get one with him anyway. That wasn’t a big thought, but he knew she was single. As well as cute. Not a killer due to her first mode anymore, but still a shooter, which to his mind just meant she was the type of person who would kill at need, without hesitation. Like she had that morning already. Saving lives, in this case.
His main focus was really on his job, however.
“We can scramble back-up…” Burkes didn’t really think it was needed, but there was a group of low powered Infected who had been committing acts of vandalism in Colorado. If they were even Infected at all. The honest truth was, the man was scrambling to find something for Team Two to do.
Interestingly, Cin was able to cross reference the whole thing for him, just sitting there. He was on with Agent Portman, who had gone out into the field himself, and met a teen boy the day before.
Reading up on the whole thing took her less than half a minute.
She just spoke out loud.
“Hunter Collins. The boy that Portman met yesterday? He’s leading the group. On the good side he’s actually Infected. Probably a class one. The rest of the kids all go to the same high school. Really… Asking them politely not to vandalize things any more will probably work. They don’t actually mean any harm. You should send in a combination of Agents and Team Two members though. It will freak them the heck out. Scared straight and all that? I mean, overkill to the extreme, but it should work pretty well in this case.”
Enough to stop their pro-Infected wall art. From the pictures from Hunter, some of that was actually really good. As in so highly skilled that it was probably someone’s power.
“You know… You should get them to do some real wall art in the area. Get with business owners and all that? Free labor. That stuff isn’t bad, really. The subject matter could be a little different. Maybe a bit more… I don’t know, pro-America or something like that?”
Burkes glared at her a bit, but his mind was all about who to send out, instead of sudden Cindy hatred. He got she was actually trying to help him out in his goals, plus the fact that she’d identified the people behind things in a few seconds. By name. It made the work a lot easier. She even had motives for the vandals. That kind of thing was almost never really understood.
“Got that Portman?”
The other man had, since Cin was a bit of a loud talker at need. After a few minutes, the call was concluded, the man in his black jacket looking at her closely.
“Now, what can I do for you, Ms. Mableton?”
Instead of flirting, which was kind of tempting, given that the man was in shape, and sort of cute, she just took a deep breath.
“Two things. I need to debrief on the situation this morning. Not that it’s all that advanced for my part. Also, you and Lancaster are needed for a mission tomorrow. In another reality. We have transport. It’s kind of different.”
The man suddenly started to envision a two man assassination team going in to kill someone or other. There were no details however, since he didn't have the mission specs yet.
Shaking her head, she smiled.
“Nothing that sinister. It’s a dinner party, on the Moon. In another reality, of c
ourse. With the Queen of the place. She’s also Sara’s contact there and sort of her tutor, which is kind of a big deal, now that it’s been mentioned. Um… Will Baker’s aunt as well, meaning he’s probably sort of important over there. I can get more information about the place and what we need to be doing for it, from here. From Will and the dead Tor. He was from a different reality, but it’s really close, except the part where he wanted to kill us all.”
That led into the actual story from earlier, which was all taken down and gone over so carefully that she spent nearly two hours going over three minutes of fighting. It was boring, but had to be done, just to make certain they didn't miss anything. Then she had to cover the other parts, since they were dealing with people from other worlds. That was kind of a big deal, as far as some people were concerned.
When that was done, the man actually winked at her.
“Lancaster!” He bellowed the name, but the tall blond ex-Agent was there almost instantly. Having been hovering just outside the door, eavesdropping.
Not that she was going to whine about that. It was, more or less, her job as well. Listening to things and staying informed.
The tall guy didn’t smile, his face being a bit blank.
“What’s the situation?”
Burkes didn’t pretend not to get the idea at all, having worked out from their discussion a lot about what was going to be needed the next day.
“We’re up for a mission. A meet and greet in a different reality. Get with Baker on that, since it’s in the world he comes from, with a lot of his family planning to be there. I take it he doesn’t know them all that well?” There was a glance at Cindy then, so she nodded.
“Right. They’re really family oriented, but Baker only met most of them a few months ago, to his perspective. It’s been longer over there. Slightly over a year. The rules are a bit different, since he was raised on Earth, and we’re going to Harmony, which is the main city on the Moon. Still, he knows more than we do about it, from stories and all that.”
Lancaster nodded, not bothering to sit.
“Who’s our team for this?”
That got listed off, the man nodding after a bit.
“We need two guards as well. Who do we have on tap for that?”
She didn't know. Marcia hadn’t even picked anyone yet. Leaving the whole thing to her.
“I don’t really know. Honestly… Wait for a second?” She focused on the dead Tor, since he knew magic really well.
The shields they had blocked some mental effects, but that was the weakest point of the things. Telepaths could work through them, if they were powerful. That meant that some people with that kind of basic power should be able to take out attackers well enough that way. It was why she’d been able to distract the now dead tall person like she had. He just wasn’t ready for that kind of thing to take place. They had low level abilities like that where he came from, but it was vague and hazy, compared to what she did.
Taking a few minutes, she worked out who would probably be the best people to get in for the whole thing on that score.
“Denis Tomkins and Chris Poures. She won’t be happy, first mode wise, but her powers are going to be the most useful there. Well, if we have to fight. We shouldn’t, actually. It isn’t impossible however.”
That part was just true. The people there were nearly as violent as they were. Not quite, but Cindy understood that their big issues were entitlement and combat rage, which was a genetic condition that caused people to fight.
The Infected were more unstable than that, overall.
The men grilled her for about an hour on what would be needed, both of them half wanting to suggest leaving most of the others who were going behind. Especially the little girl. They got, almost instantly, that Sara was the one they were going for, so didn’t say that part out loud, but both still kind of wanted to protect her, since she was just a little kid. That was their real point in thinking it as well. That Sara needed to be looked out for, being young like she was.
It kind of made Cindy like both of them better than she had before. Not that she’d hated them. True, for a while she’d wanted to murder Lancaster, but that was a lot closer to wanting to sleep with him than anything else, now that the first mode urge was gone. It had probably always been like that with the men that she’d killed. That made her suddenly glad that the obsession had started with her third-grade teacher, not her father like she’d always figured it had. That she’d sort of had a crush on the man was odd, given that she’d hated him, but it was probably down to her having been conflicted at the time or something.
Now though, she was fine with both the men there with her.
Both figured that Brian should have to go, interestingly. Lancaster was kind of against Cin going at all. Burkes had no issue that way. Then, the men knew her as different people. Her first meeting with Lancaster had been sending him away so that she wouldn’t try to kill him. That part, her fighting her first mode enough to get him to leave, wasn’t lost on him. He just thought of her as a killer without restraint, otherwise. It wasn’t really true any longer.
Burkes thought of her as a locked-on Agent. That part shocked her a bit. She didn’t know the job, but had tried to take his lead on things and do the work needed at the time. That was all the man really needed from any of the Infected. To his mind though that made her kind of special. A lot like Proxy, or Director Turner, instead of the half useless Operatives that made up the rest of the IPB staff there.
Except that over the last year or so, a lot of them had really stepped up a lot. The idea got him to nod and think about the list again, several times.
Finally, at about six in the evening, her stomach aching in her middle, she smiled at the men.
“I need to go eat. Again. I lost about fifteen pounds earlier, in the fight. Well, from the healing and half my shoulder being gone. That has to be replaced.” She expected them to think of her as lazy, but they both nodded, with Lancaster actually grinning at her.
“Right. We should have covered that part already. Go get something. Bring us back a few trays, when you get done?” He was ready for her to snap at him over it, since he knew that it had to sound sexist. That wasn’t his intent at all, however. He just wanted to stay and work, without the interruption of leaving the room. It was an honest first mode issue for him.
She nodded.
“Got it. I’ll bring it in when I get done, if I can’t find someone to do it sooner.”
That was a decent answer for both men, though Burkes was a bit pissed at Lancaster suddenly. Not over the fact that they were staying in and working, either. It was the current year after all, which meant that half of all women could pitch a fit over any perceived slight and get away with it. He wasn’t totally certain that Cindy, who wasn’t old, and who had a college education, might not be that sort of person.
It nearly got her to laugh, but she left the room first.
The worries that way might be real enough, but she wasn’t going to have big issues that way. Not until she was safe from being killed for being a pain in the rump. Even then, being able to know when someone actually meant to be rude to her had helped her out several times over the past months. Most of the people there really didn’t think that way, so she’d managed to not be a bitch over things that she might have otherwise.
For one thing, that kind of thinking almost never helped.
That meant that Marcia Turner had to be placated, in the main, but getting into fights over things like getting the coffee, or in this case dinner, wasn’t a smart move. Turner was older than she seemed, and wasn’t into putting up with what she thought of as stupid shit.
Going all feminist on her, outside of a few issues, wouldn’t play. If the Agents had been blackmailing her into blowjobs, she could complain. Getting them coffee or food so they could do their jobs better wouldn’t be worth whining about to the Director’s way of thinking. There were a few other issues that she might have been up at arms over, of course. On the go
od side, they were both on board with the right to vote and getting all the abortions anyone wanted. Even the Agents were on the same page that way, more or less. For the time being she decided to let that be good enough.
She didn’t run across the base this time, but did walk with a sense of purpose. Food was waiting and she was going to eat first, before setting up the boys in the Agents’ office. To that end, she hit the buffet, taking a nice selection of things, which left her with a heaping tray filled with items that were better than they had a right to be, truthfully.
She moved to sit near her normal spot, which was empty at the moment, but didn’t have to wait long for other people to come. In this case it was Karen Young who got there first, smiling happily when she saw her.
“Hey! Are you all right? I heard about earlier. Well, I heard it at the time, as well. It was over before I got there. Brian said you were hurt?”
She nodded, taking a big bite of garlic mashed potatoes. Given her life she wasn’t going to be kissing anyone that night, so it was probably fine to eat that kind of thing. They were great. Real, for one thing, and made with butter and cream.
“Tor, the one that survived, had a magical amulet that let me regrow my shoulder. It was pretty much gone. I don’t mean trashed, I mean, you know an empty crescent? Anyway, I lived. Now I’m starving, of course.” She smiled and took a bite of her bread. It was perfectly toasted on the top and, when she took the first bite, she realized it had cheese on it as well.
She had to keep herself from making noises over it. It was that good, however.
Karen went wide eyed, but her words spoke of how she didn't know what to do in order to help out. If what was really needed was food, Cindy seemed to be well taken care of that way for the moment. Her own tray was filled with salad and a bit of cottage cheese, since she had a few more pounds to lose, in order to get back into perfect shape for public work.