“Inasmuch
as anyone can have jurisdiction over bears, yes,” I said, taking my badge from
her hand. “I’m Agent Marchen. These are my associates, Agent Winters and Agent
Santos.”
Jennifer
turned a wary eye on Demi and Sloane. Demi looked cautiously back. Sloane kept
looking around like she expected us to be attacked at any moment. It was
starting to make me nervous about remaining out in the open.
Still,
this was an opportunity to see what we might be up against if Jennifer was in
the process of going fully active. Using her study of my team and I as cover, I
studied her right back. She looked basically like Sloane’s description, but
with an added dimension of quiet exhaustion that I wouldn’t have guessed. She
looked like the sort of woman who had long since given up wishing for a fairy
tale ending, and was just hoping to make it through the week without
collapsing. Too bad for her that the fairy tale hadn’t given
up so easily. She wasn’t armed, and she didn’t look particularly
dangerous.
I’ve
been bitten by that assumption before.
“You
look legit,” she said finally.
“It’s
the shoes, ma’am,” I said.
I
was only halfway kidding. As a civilian-interface field operation, this required
a bit more subtlety than our usual Island of Misfit Toys approach. I habitually
wore black suits and sunglasses to work anyway, trying to overwrite my natural
Snow White tendencies with the more modern fairy tale of the Men in Black.
Sloane and Demi were more iconoclastic, and had required a stop by the Wardrobe
Department, located across from Dispatch, before they were ready to go. The
results, however, spoke for themselves. My teammates looked like they shared my
tailor—probably because they did, everything in Wardrobe having been stitched
by either Jeff or one of his fellow five-oh-threes.
Both
Demi and Sloane had chosen to forego the sunglasses, Demi because they left her
essentially blind and Sloane because she wanted to be able to see the scene more
clearly. Whatever she was seeing, she didn’t like it; her agitation was
becoming difficult to ignore. I cleared my throat.
“Agent Winters? Is there a
problem?”
“We
shouldn’t be standing out here in the open,” she said. There was a note of real
fear in her voice. That worried me. Sloane rarely shows fear. “This is a bad
place to be when the bears come.”
The
word “bears” brought about an immediate change in Jennifer. She visibly
flinched, looking from side to side as she demanded, “Where?”
“Miss
Lockwood, may we continue this inside?” The situation was in danger of getting
away from me, and I needed to prevent that from happening. Jeff and Andy could
watch the street and notify us if any bears decided to appear.
“You
did
call us, ma’am,” said Demi
softly.
Jennifer
flinched again before nodding and stepping backward, into the relative safety
of her own home. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking,
making you stand outside like this …”
Sloane
cast me an anxious look as we followed Jennifer inside. Territorial urges went
with the story.
One
way or another, the bears were going to get in.
Jennifer
was unhappy about leaving me in the living room while she took Sloane and Demi
on a tour, but I insisted, and she was beat down enough not to argue beyond a
few weak protests. I waited until the sound of their voices was muffled by the
kitchen wall before pulling out my phone and calling Andy.
“What’s
going on?” he asked.
“No
signs of breaking and entering, but Sloane is tense.
Just standing in the yard got her pretty agitated, and she said that the bears
were coming. Do you see any bears?”
“No
bears,” said Andy. “Could she be talking about metaphorical bears?”
“Okay,
well, do you see any large gay men—apart from yourself—or motorcycle gangs?”
Andy
snorted laughter before replying, “No, but I’ll keep an eye out. Jeff is going
over possible variations now. He’ll let you know as soon as he finds
something.”
A
horrible thought was occurring to me, swimming slowly out of my knowledge of
the narrative and what the ATI spectrum was capable of doing to people who
didn’t get out of its way quickly enough. “Please do. There are three of us
here.”
There
was a pause while Andy processed my meaning. Then he swore. “Shit, Henry, do
you really think—”
“I
really do,” I said. “Demi’s new—she’s a baby agent; Sloane was nearly pulled
into a classical female story by the ATI spectrum; and I have a male name. It’s
not perfect casting, but since when has an ongoing memetic incursion cared
about being perfect? We’re ripe to become her Three Bears, if we’re not
careful.”
“I’ll
be right in,” said Andy. The phone went dead.
That
hadn’t been my intention, but it would serve as well as anything, since having
four members of my team in the house would keep us from falling neatly into the
holes that were open in Jennifer’s narrative.
By
the time Jennifer returned with Demi and Sloane, Andy was standing in the
living room next to me. She stopped, paling, her eyes widening in a way I was
all too familiar with. She thought that she’d been lied to, that our badges
were fake, and that we were here to rob her, or worse.
There
was a moment when things could have turned ugly, but that sort of moment is why
we have Andy. He smiled, stepping forward, and offered her his hand. “Agent Robinson,”
he said. “I apologize for my tardiness, but I was asking some of the neighbor
kids if they’d seen anything unusual, and I lost track of the rest of my team.
I’d lose my own head if it wasn’t screwed on tight.” He knocked the knuckles of
his other hand lightly against the smooth brown dome of his skull, as if to
illustrate his point.
Jennifer
didn’t take the offered hand. Instead, voice shaking slightly, she said, “I’d
like to see your badge, please.”
“Of course, ma’am.” Andy reached
into his jacket and produced his badge, which looked, naturally, exactly like
mine, save for the name and photograph. He handed it to Jennifer. “Would you
also like the number for our supervisor?”
“Yes,”
said Jennifer immediately.
“No
problem, ma’am.” Andy produced a business card.
Jennifer
snatched it out of his hand, pulling her phone out of her pocket and taking a
large step backward as she dialed. Andy moved to stand beside me, and Sloane
and Demi moved to flank us, the four of us presenting as unthreatening a line as
we could while we waited for the inevitable scene to play out.
“Yes—wait,
really? That’s really the name of the agency?” A pause, before Jennifer said,
sounding alarmed, “No, ma’am, I didn’t mean to imply that you were lying to me,
I was just surprised. I’ve never heard of you before, and—” There was another
pause. “Yes, ma’am, they’re here. No, they haven’t done anything wrong. I just
wanted to verify their credentials before I let them inside.”
Sloane
rolled her eyes. I gave a minute shake of my head. If Jennifer wanted to
pretend to be more cautious than she was, that was her business.
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.” Jennifer lowered her phone, looking
stunned. “You’re really from the Bureau of Urban Wildlife,” she said, holding
Andy’s badge out for him to take.
He
also took back the business card. At that particular moment, she was too
confused to notice. By the time she realized that she didn’t have it anymore,
we would hopefully be long gone.
“I
assure you, we are here only to guarantee your safety and the safety of the
people around you,” I said. “The Bureau takes reports of urban bears very
seriously.” Especially when they came from women who were flagged as borderline
fairy tale nexus points.
“All
right,” said Jennifer, seeming to deflate and tense at the same time. She no
longer had to devote energy to being scared of us, and could go back to
worrying about the real danger: the bears. “Come with me. I’ll show you where I
saw them.”
Jennifer’s
bedroom matched the rest of the house in all the ways that counted: small,
shabby, but clearly making an effort to stay as clean and well maintained as
possible. There was a gray-striped tabby cat on the bed, curled in the classic
half-comma position preferred by felines everywhere. It woke up when we entered
the room, lifting its head and turning interested green eyes in my direction. I
winced. Experience told me what was going to happen next—and sure enough, the
cat stood, jumped off the bed, and raced to start twining around my ankles.
“Wow,”
said Jennifer, sounding impressed. “Puss doesn’t like anybody but me. I guess
if my cat approves of you, you must be okay.”
Sloane
rolled her eyes so hard that I was afraid she was going to sprain something,
but she kept her mouth shut, thankfully. Animals are not the barometer of
humanity that some people make them out to be—not unless those animals have
started talking, and then they present a whole new set of problems.
“Anyway,
this is where I saw the bears,” said Jennifer, walking to the room’s single
window and gesturing toward the glass. “The first night, I thought it was just
a dream, you know? I’ve had weirder dreams, and how often do you get bears in
the city?”
“You’d
be surprised,” said Andy, somehow managing to sound reassuring and warning at
the same time—we were the people who dealt with bears, and so we would see them
a lot, according to his tone, but people like Jennifer shouldn’t have to worry
about unscheduled ursine incursions. “How many times have the bears been back?”
“And
when did it become ‘bears,’ plural?” asked Sloane. “You only mentioned one bear
before. I thought this was a single bear situation.”
“It
was the first night, when I thought it was a dream,” said Jennifer. “The second
night was when the second bear came. I would have thought I was still dreaming,
but …” Helplessly, she gestured to the window.
Careful
not to trip over Puss in the process, I walked to the window and looked
through. Jennifer’s backyard was as shabby-looking as everything else in the
neighborhood: more mud than grass, with an unpainted fence made of splintering
boards separating her from the next yard over.
“I
pay extra for the view,” said Jennifer defensively, as if she could anticipate
our thoughts.
“It’s
nice,” I said. I meant it, in my way. This was what she had, and she was making
the best of it. Far be it from me to judge someone for taking the hand that
life dealt to them. And it
was
a nice
strip of yard, in all its sparse weediness; it was
something growing in the middle of a city, and that was beautiful.
It
was probably a little more reassuring before something clawed great gouges into
the windowsill and ripped up the dirt underneath the window itself, but that
was virtually beside the point.
Sloane
pushed her way in next to me, nose quivering as she looked down at the gouges
in the wood. “Something’s wrong,” she said, voice pitched low in an effort to
keep Jennifer from hearing her. It was surprisingly thoughtful, for Sloane.
Then again, maybe she was worried about the fact that we were clearly standing
in bear country. “The bears shouldn’t be trying to break into
her
house. She should be the one who’s
trying to break into
theirs
.”
“Variation?” I suggested.
“It’s
possible, but this is a pretty damn big variation,” said Sloane.
“Excuse
me,” said Jennifer. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what are the two of you
talking about? I’m the one with bears in her backyard. I think I should be the
one getting answers.”
“Yes,
ma’am, and you will be getting the answers that you’re looking for,” I said,
turning to face her. “I’m afraid, however, that it isn’t entirely safe for you
to be here right now. Would you be willing to come back to the station with us?
Just for some routine questions, I promise. No one’s in trouble here. There’s
no law against having bears force their way into your backyard.”
“What
about Puss?” she asked, suspicion hooding her eyes again.
“If it’s not safe for me to be here, how can it be safe for him?”
The
idea of sharing a car with her overly amorous cat, which was now rolling on its
back and trying to entice me to rub its belly, made me feel faintly ill. I
managed to keep my neutral expression fixed firmly in place as I shook my head
and said, “We can’t have animals at the station, but I assure you, your cat
will be perfectly fine. Bears don’t eat cats.”
Demi
gave me a bemused look. I was probably wrong about bears and cats. It wasn’t
like keeping up on bear facts was a normal part of my job. And anyway, it
didn’t really matter: once Jennifer was out of the apartment, the bears would
follow. There was no danger here without her.
“I’m
really not sure—”
“Ma’am,
what we do can be somewhat alarming, if you’re not expecting it,” said Andy
soothingly. “We just want to ask you a few questions—nothing serious, just
getting an idea of your daily routine, anything that might have attracted the
bears to this specific location, rather than one of the other yards in this
area. Once that’s done, we can set you up with some bear defenses, although
hopefully you won’t need them by then—” Still talking, he slipped an arm around
Jennifer’s shoulders and led her out of the room.
“That’s
got to be a narrative we just don’t know about yet,” said Sloane, shaking her
head as she watched Jennifer and Andy leave. “How the hell does he talk people
into going along with him like that? It must be magic.”
“That,
or he actually knows how to talk to people without sounding like he’s about to
pull their hair out,” I said. “Demi. I need you.”
The
newest member of our team actually jumped a bit, looking at me guiltily, like
she’d been hoping to be forgotten. Too bad for her.
There was a reason she’d been recruited. “Yes, Agent Marchen?”