Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone (22 page)

Of course, the real bottom line was this: In the field, Michael enjoyed far more success than failure, and he’d had very few professional days as bad as this one.

Michael took a seat a few table rows from the back, and Mark plopped down next to him. Mark was sullen about this day, too. He was right alongside Michael during the breakout at the pit, but because
he
was the paranormal agent, he felt it was more his failure than his partner’s. And after his thorough ass-chewing, he was pretty shamefaced over his throw-down with Powerhouse — partly because he had failed to get the best of Powerhouse (something he’d secretly always felt he could do), but mainly because he knew what an embarrassment it was to Michael. Even when Powerhouse showed up for the meeting sporting a noticeable bruise along the side of his jaw and the slightest hint of a pair of black eyes, not even that was enough to make up for how miserable Mark felt.

Powerhouse and Pendler took seats on the opposite side near the front of the room — whatever shame Powerhouse might have carried over their gym fight, it clearly wasn’t as pronounced as Mark’s. Powerhouse craned his neck around, made eye contact with Michael, and nodded in greeting. He did not acknowledge Mark; maybe he really was done taking his shit.

As the room filled, Michael spotted Captain Brunn just outside the open doorway, whispering with some intensity to Lieutenant Hart and a short woman who Michael believed was Lieutenant Commander Panettiere. Whatever this secret synod was about, it looked like it would be starting soon.

As they waited, Michael indulged his usual habit (a nice distraction right now) of scanning the room and mentally marking off which paranormal agents had been called in this time; the PCA rarely grouped all their superhuman assets in one place anymore (a hard lesson, and they had tried to learn from it), but given the odd handling, with the in-person runners and such, he was curious who else was showing up this afternoon.

Sitting in the same row as Michael and Mark but all the way at the opposite end was
Warp
, who could distort others’ perception of time; in essence, he could force his targets into “slow motion” — or so it appeared to everyone else, as the targets themselves viewed everyone else as suddenly being on “fast-forward.” It was a profoundly useful ability, with one terrible flaw: Using the power took an extreme amount of bio-energy from Warp. It wasn’t merely that a single minute’s usage wiped him out for a few days. No, the real tragedy was that the quasi-time warps he created also distorted his own physiology, which, medically speaking, accelerated his aging process. As a result, the PCA tried to keep his field work to a minimum, only calling on him when absolutely necessary, and Michael and many others had a lot of admiration for the man for still volunteering to help at all. Warp was only in his mid-twenties when his power emerged six or seven months ago, and he already looked noticeably older than when he first signed up — if Michael hadn’t known better, he would have pegged the guy as being well into his thirties.

Michael next spotted
Canine
 sitting all the way in the front row, a woman who communicated telepathically with all dogs and, to a lesser degree (which she only recently discovered), wolves, coyotes, and foxes. Patricia had also escaped death from McLane’s attack last year; in her case, because one of her dogs delayed her from getting to the synod on time. She and Michael had grown to be casual friends since that day, and had once even shared their mutual view of living on borrowed time. Turning sideways in her chair, Patricia saw Michael looking at her and smiled and waved to him; he waved back.

On a very similar note,
Avian
, who was sitting directly behind Canine, had a bond with birds. But unlike Canine, who could carry on a virtual conversation with her animals,
Avian
 could only tap into whatever held a bird’s foremost attention (she had a standard joke, “They really are ‘birdbrains’ after all!” which she loved to tell ... over and over); the more she concentrated, the more birds she could read over a larger area. While not much for offensive power, she was one of hell of an asset for reconnaissance in the field.

Two rows behind Powerhouse and Pendler sat
Density
. She had a fantastic offensive and defensive ability, but the effects were sadly temporary, lasting only minutes without Density’s influence — otherwise, the PCA could better cage some of those super-strong rogues, maybe even give Powerhouse more of a challenge in the testing vault.

Michael spotted another couple of paranormal agents, Class Twos who only helped in investigatory work and whose codenames and powers escaped him at the moment. He was about to turn around and face forward when he spotted one more Class Two paranormal ... or rather, said paranormal’s proxy. It was also dubious to refer to this absent person as an actual asset of the PCA, because he kept the PCA at arm’s length and only participated with a minimum of contact — his “assistance” could be fairly described as “the PCA keeps him in the loop, and he promises not to go rogue.” Considering how Brunn had prohibited discussing this synod electronically, Michael was not entirely sure how they had informed this paranormal out in Las Vegas, where he was rumored to live, but they must have, because at the very back of the room stood the proof.

The paranormal in question had given himself the codename of
Asimov
, and his special ability entailed building robots. It was one of these robots that Michael spotted, standing at attention at the very back of the room. The gunmetal-grey, mostly-humanoid robot was both sleeker and more impressive than anything anyone in the actual robotics industry had created to date, yet still fell short of Data from
Star Trek
— it was perhaps more on par with C-3PO from
Star Wars
. And since Asimov had a tendency to name his creations after famous robots from literature and film — if Michael recalled, this particular robot was dubbed “Daneel” — he probably had his own “Data” and “Threepio” running around somewhere.

The infamous Asimov, whose real name was Rick Miner, owned his own company,
mIner Robot
, from which the very wealthy could lease — only lease, never buy — novelty versions of his better creations. Having gone paranormal on the actual Night of the White Flash, Miner initially planned to sell his secrets for creating semi-sentient mechanical men for billions of dollars ... until he discovered that he could not sell these secrets, because he honestly did not
know
 how he did it — his mind went into a fugue state when he worked. Rumor was that he even tried recording himself building one, but neither film nor video could capture it with any quality; it was as if his trance released some sort of short-range, biologically-generated interference at the same time.

So Miner became paranoid that someone else, some norm in the robotics industry, would reverse-engineer one of his robots, and then
they
 would sell the secrets for billions. Hence,
mIner Robot
leased lesser versions of his machines; he kept all the best ones for himself.

Perhaps noticing that Michael had been staring at it, Daneel rotated its metallic head with its gleaming green eyes toward him. Michael threw the robot a mock salute before turning away.

Movement from the door caught Michael’s eye, and he sat up straight, ready for the synod to begin. But it was only Lieutenant Hart; he entered alone, approaching the podium to type something on the tablet device in front of the microphone. Brunn and Panettiere were still having their intense conversation right outside, and yet another officer, whom Michael did not recognize, had joined them.

Mark suddenly sighed and stood up, grousing, “Come on.”

“What?” Michael was caught off-guard, but he hurried to follow his partner. He whispered, “Where the hell are we going?”

“Don’t make me explain it,” Mark whispered back as they passed behind other agents. “Just ... come on.”

Michael followed him to the end of the aisle and down the steps toward the door. Was Mark actually suggesting they should bail on the meeting? Why would ...?

He found himself especially surprised — then almost frantic! — when Mark turned into the row where Powerhouse and Pendler were sitting.

Oh, Jesus, if Mark starts something
here
...!

Michael wrestled with the sincere temptation to pull out one of his psi-jammers as Mark strolled past Pendler, past Powerhouse (who was also looking hyper-alert at the moment), then past an open chair to take a seat in the next one. He flopped down, leaned back, looked briefly at Powerhouse — a simple glance, with a very neutral expression — before staring straight ahead, as if he were doing nothing more than waiting for the synod to start.

Powerhouse looked up at Michael, his befuddled expression clearly asking,
What the hell?

Michael shrugged one shoulder and gave his head a slight shake. He didn’t know what Mark’s actual motives were, exactly — hell, he might only be doing it as a clumsy apology to Michael himself — but he couldn’t help noticing that everyone in the room was watching. Mark might not have literally shaken hands and made up with Powerhouse, but by moving so they could sit next to him, he had done a lot to diffuse whatever gossip was going around: Everyone in the room would now inform the grapevine that Teams Shockwave and Powerhouse sat together during the synod, so how bad could their fight have been, really?

Not too shabby, Mark
, Michael thought as he sat down between them.
You still manage to surprise me sometimes.

Not five seconds later, Michael’s phone chirped with a new email, and it added a tiny little coda to the end, letting him know who sent it. Keeping his phone below table level, he scrolled to his Inbox and thumbed a few extra keys that only he and Mark knew — a moment later, a previously invisible email popped into view.

Can you visit your friendly neighborhood D.E. about 30 minutes after dusk? Time to introduce you to my new friend. —V

Michael swallowed a groan.
Ugh. I just want to go home and crawl into bed ...

But he knew he wouldn’t do that. He deleted the email and started to type an independent reply when Brunn finally marched into the room.

Before even reaching the lectern, Brunn snapped, “I want all phones turned off.” He then looked in Michael’s direction and added a harsh, “That means you, Lieutenant.”

Well ...
Michael thought.
Guess Brunn knows about today’s glorious events.
He shut off his phone; his reply to Vortex would have to wait.

Brunn hit the ground running. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve now had a
third
attempted prisonbreak, this one just a few minutes ago in a neighboring city.” People started commenting to one another, and Brunn barked, “Zip it, people!” When the room fell silent again, he continued, “This time around, the staff at the penitentiary were able to contain all three rogues before they escaped. But our biggest concern is, just like the two local breakouts, the escape attempt appears instigated from the
outside
. People, someone is helping these rogues, and we currently have no idea who they are or, more importantly,
how
they’re doing it.” He paused briefly to let that soak in. “In every case, multiple safeguards are being neutralized, and in some instances, correctional staff are being killed, allowing the imprisoned rogues to attempt their escape without further assistance. Our working theory is that a paranormal capable of invisibility or full cloaking must be involved, but other possibilities are being considered.

“Now ... as unlikely as it sounds, these breakouts are
not
the original reason this meeting was called, though the timing is highly suspect. Believe it or not, the focus of this synod is on another, even more staggering topic. Lieutenant Commander Panettiere is more familiar with the particulars, so she will now take over. People, I know what you’re about to hear will be shocking, but I expect all chatter to be kept to a
minimum
. Understood?”

Brunn nodded to Panettiere, who stepped up to the lectern and lowered the microphone; she also touched the tablet, bringing the large screen on the wall behind her to life — it displayed the words:
S
EARCH FOR
E
XTRA-
T
ERRESTRIAL
I
NTELLIGENCE
.

“As most of you probably know,” Panettiere opened, “almost immediately following the White Flash six years ago, SETI began detecting signals of extraterrestrial origin — if it weren’t for the paranormals, this would have been the biggest news in human history.” She smiled. “As of last night, SETI might be poised to steal back the world’s attention.”

Looks were exchanged around the room as Panettiere paused to consult her notes (for effect, Michael suspected) before continuing.

“SETI has cataloged and identified multiple signals from numerous extraterrestrial races, and the vast majority of these originated many, many light-years away — very exciting stuff, but we won’t be meeting these ETs anytime soon. There has been one notable exception: We
have
detected signals from one particular race — a race called the
Taalu,
and nicknamed the ‘Arthians’ by SETI staff — where a portion of these signals have been originating closer and closer to Earth.”

A small rumble swelled from the audience. Brunn clapped his hands twice and the noise stopped, mostly.

“Last night,” Panettiere continued, “SETI detected the latest signal from the Taalu, and
this
signal appears to have been a live transmission taking place in real time ... between a vessel somewhere in orbit of our world and an individual somewhere on the surface.”

The “chatter” was instantaneous and not remotely kept to a minimum — half the room bursting out with versions of “Oh, my God!” and the other half challenging whether or not this was a joke.