March Forth (The Woodford Chronicles Book 1) (5 page)

              One of the other new officers noticed, and said, “What’s wrong, Drisbane?  Where’d they stick you?”

              Steven shrugged, and walked away.  The organization had taught him discretion.  He saw no reason to tell the other new officers that his paper said only, “Room 301, 6:00 tonight.”

              At 5:59 pm, he knocked on the door of room 301.  At precisely 6:00 pm, it opened.  General Larsen was nothing if not absolutely literal.

              “Come in, Drisbane, have a seat,” the General said as he ushered Steven into a room nearly identical to that in which they had had their first meeting.  They both wore the standard black uniforms this time, but Steven’s sense of confusion and dread felt all too familiar.

              “Why was I not given an assignment, General?”

              “You were.  You just weren’t given a paper explaining your assignment.”

              Now that he was quite used to Larsen’s ways, Steven followed up with another direct question.

              “Why was I not given a paper explaining my assignment?”

              “Ah.  That is an excellent question.  You’re quite good at asking excellent questions, have I ever told you that?  Well, now I have.”  Larsen shuffled through some papers on the table in front of him.  “You were not given a paper, Drisbane, because you are being given a special assignment, the likes of which the organization has not embarked upon in the past.”

              “I…wow,” Steven said, nonplussed.  “Doing what, exactly?”

              “You are going to find David Carver and bring him in by any means necessary.”

              Steven blinked several times.  “David Carver?  Chief Admiral David Carver?  The founder? I thought he was dead, or in another dimension or something.”

              “Those are rumors.  We know that he is alive.  For the past couple of years, there have been more and more traces of his molecular structure and energy signature picked up by our equipment.  He never stays in one place long enough for us to catch up to him, and we cannot seem to predict where he will turn up next.”  Larsen sighed.  “For over a decade, he was either laying low or simply … not himself.  We have seen more evidence of him in the past year than we have in the past decade as a whole.”

              “If this has been going on for over a year, why wait ‘til now to bring him in?  Why didn’t you track him down a year ago?”

              “Couple of reasons.  First, we needed to train the right candidate to catch the man.  It may not be as simple as finding him and bringing him here.  He may not be the same man he was before he left.  It’s been a very long time.”

              “What makes me the right candidate?”

              “Honestly?  There have been too many ‘coincidences’ involving you and him.  I have learned, in my years on this earth, that there is no such thing as coincidence.  You actually met Carver, albeit briefly, just as he was deserting his post.  Then, by a completely unrelated string of so-called ‘coincidences,’ you caught the attention of the organization and joined us, yourself.  While you were taking your entry exams, you inexplicably felt the desire to describe your meeting with Carver, even though you had no idea who he was or what it meant.  That’s too much ‘coincidence,’ if you ask me.  It means something.  I think there’s a good chance you will be the man to find him.”

              Steven’s ego deflated a bit that the General hadn’t said something more grandiose, something along the lines of, “We’ve been waiting for a man with your talents!”  However, he did his best to hide his disappointment.

              “Has anyone been looking for him?  Were you just waiting to assign me to the task?”

              Larsen sighed, then, and looked uncharacteristically melancholy.  He was silent for a long moment before saying, quite unexpectedly, “You know next year will be thirty years I’m with the organization?”

              “I didn’t know that, sir.  Congratulations.”

              Larsen snorted.  “When I first signed on, Carver was not just a great guy, but a genius.  He was my friend, my teacher.  I watched him deteriorate over time, just totally lose control…”

              General Larsen paused for a long moment, apparently lost in memory.  He stared at nothing in particular on the wall; his eyes, normally such a bright and jovial blue, looked nearly grey and somewhat glazed. 

              The moment passed, and he visibly shook himself.  His gaze returned to Steven as he mentally returned to the present moment.  “To answer your original question, many of us searched for him for years, when he first disappeared.  That search dwindled as years dragged on, until it was just me looking in earnest.  The only hard evidence I’ve ever found of his continued existence was his motorcycle, cast off and out of gas, abandoned in the Midwest.”  He sighed.  “I’ve taken good care of it, in case he comes back.  But that was nearly fifteen years ago. Since then, we have yet to pick up more than vague, ephemeral evidence, traces of his energy signature and so on.  I’ve recruited some men from NASA to help improve our technology to find him, and we’ve picked up more and more energy signatures, but nothing concrete.”  He sighed again.  “However, as we’ve found more and more of such traces, you’ve completed your training.  Another coincidence. That’s why I’m betting on you.  Maybe you’ll be the one to find him. ”

              Steven considered all that he had just learned.

              “You said I will bring him in ‘by any means necessary,’ General.  Are we treating Carver as an enemy?  I understand your desire to find him, but ‘by any means necessary’ could be a bit drastic.”

              Larsen hesitated for a second before answering.  “Carver is a threat to us, Ensign.”  (Steven felt a moment’s pleasure at his superior’s use of his new title.) “He is a threat to all of us.  He knows all there is to know about us – possibly more than anyone currently with the organization; damn it, he WAS
the organization – and he’s unstable.  Unpredictable.  Out of control.  Essentially, that makes him a dangerous weapon.  Best case, he’s just crazy – that still makes him the equivalent of a malfunctioning nuclear bomb that may or may not go off at any second. Worst case…”

              The General paused, momentarily appearing much older than his fifty-five years.

              “I truly want to believe that he is still the man I called a friend, but the fact is, he deserted fifteen years ago.  It seemed like he had some kind of debilitating mental illness – it seemed like he had some kind of magical Alzheimer’s, really.  But what if he didn’t?  What if he did go crazy, but not the way we all thought?  What if he deserted because he was against us?  What if he turned against our country?”  Larsen pounded a hand on the table.  “We can’t take the chance, Drisbane.  We need him contained.  He is a threat to all that we are.  He could be a threat to civilians, too, if he’s gone renegade.  He could be a threat to civilians even if he’s just crazy!  Best case, worst case….whatever happens…  Carver being out there, in the world… one way or the other, it has to stop.”

              Steven pondered the gravity of the situation, and the possible danger.  After a moment, he nodded.  “I’m your man, sir.  How are we going to do things differently than you did on your previous attempts to find him?”

              “Well, for one thing,” Larsen replied, “we’re gonna make damn sure he doesn’t see you coming.”

              And so it was that Steven Drisbane became, quite literally, an invisible man.  The tech operatives that Larsen had recruited from NASA, John and Eric, had tweaked Wands to keep Steven utterly invisible at all times.  These upgraded Wands rendered him not only physically invisible, but undetectable by magical means
.
His very molecules were hidden to a point of near non-existence.  The energy he emitted through the sheer act of living could not be picked up by man or machine. Even if he were to walk up to someone and punch them, while cloaked, the other person would not feel it; they may wonder why they had a vague soreness around the jaw, if they noticed anything at all.  Steven’s very matter was altered. He could not be heard, felt, smelled, or otherwise detected by any living creature while he was on the job, and he was always
on the job.

              Because of the myriad concealing powers of his new, improved Wand, Steven communicated with General Larsen only through typed messages – like text messages – and photographs sent via the Wand. Because of this new feature, and the Wand’s general aesthetic similarity to a smartphone, Eric and John named the souped-up device the “SmartWand.”

              Steven had met the techs shortly after Larsen explained his new assignment.  They were an odd duo.  Eric Krull was a young man with dark hair and a slight build.  He was hyper-intelligent but intensely socially awkward.  He would speak lovingly and at length about each new gadget, and then realize people were paying attention to him and slowly, his volume would decrease and his gaze would wander downward until he appeared to be mumbling to his shoes.

              John Johannsen was a bit older – in his mid- to late thirties, by Steven’s estimation – but equally awkward, in his own way.  He spoke with a slight lisp, and rarely said anything pertinent to the mission or even the technology itself.  Instead, he would interject occasional, sarcastic comments about Eric’s lack of social skills, or anything else that amused him.   He often spoke of his former career as a musician, and seemed to resent the fact that he had joined NASA (and then the organization) rather than sticking with his passion.  However, he was quite brilliant in his knowledge of technology, even if he didn’t seem very happy about it.

              When Larsen had conducted his own search for Carver, he had started by searching for evidence anyplace that Carver had enjoyed going before his downfall.  Because Carver had had (had helped invent) devices like the Broom to make traveling the world as effortless as a walk down the block, Larsen’s search basically spanned the entirety of Earth.  To help narrow it down a bit, Larsen had asked the techs to come up with dronelike devices to scour the earth for traces of Carver.  They delivered.

              “They’re like satellites, almost, but they are intensely powerful and can trace specific molecules, energy signatures, and magical discharges ANYWHERE on the planet!” Eric had said excitedly, when explaining the devices to Steven.  “And they’re ALL set to find Carver.  They are seeking HIS molecules, HIS energy signatures, and his alone.  We’re gonna track him down, for sure.”

              John had added, “We were calling them the ‘Eyes of Sauron,’ but we’ve shortened it to the ‘Eyes’ for convenience.”

              They pulled up the data the Eyes had retrieved.  It seemed there had been no strong evidence of Carver’s energy traces for two months, when they were picked up in a small town in New Jersey.  Steven and Eric both sagged a bit in disappointment; John looked vaguely amused; Colonel Larsen appeared totally unruffled.  He clapped Steven on the shoulder.

              “Buck up, Drisbane!  That’s a lot more focused then my search was,” the General said, almost jovially.  “Off you go to New Jersey.  We’ll track him down if we have to search under every brick of that town.”

              That is almost exactly what Steven did, over the course of the next year.  He searched every inch of Woodford, New Jersey, meticulously and invisibly.  Occasionally, the Eyes would return data that indicated Carver had been somewhere else, and he would travel there, and begin his search again.  However, the Eyes picked up residual evidence of Carver in Woodford with some regularity.  They were convinced that would be the place to find him; however, he found absolutely no hard evidence, in Woodford or anywhere else.   He was beginning to feel rather defeated, and he questioned whether the Eyes were truly a valid tool to go by.

He was enjoying the quiet yet energetic little town of Woodford, though, which he invisibly inhabited while he hunted for Carver.

              He liked the quiet, residential neighborhoods full of Victorian homes, and the hustle and bustle of the main street.  He liked the quirky characters he saw on Main Street every day.  It seemed like a nice place; he often thought he would like to visit again once he was off this assignment.

              He messaged Larsen religiously of his progress, or lack thereof.  One day, he reported finding a black sock that had been discarded in the street.  Though he had no evidence linking it to Carver, he proposed that it could be Carver’s sock, based solely on the circumstantial evidence that it was black, as Carver’s uniform had been, and in Woodford.  He asked to bring it back to the techs for testing.

Larsen apparently did not see the logic of this, as he responded, “Leave it ‘til tomorrow.  Take the day off.  You need a rest.”

              Steven considered the wisdom of that statement, and decided the General was right.  He took a nap for a couple of hours, and then wandered invisibly around town.  He had noticed the library from the outside and thought the architecture was impressive; he decided to check it out.  It had been a long time since he had enough free time to read for pleasure.

              He searched through the fiction section, wondering how long it had been since he had done such a thing.  At first, he didn’t notice the woman in the aisle.  He had become so used to being invisible that he barely registered the presence of civilians anymore.  When he bumped into her and she reacted, though, he panicked. There was no way she should be able to see him, much less touch him. He thought she HAD to be working with Carver, there was no other explanation. He went on the offensive.