Authors: Pamela Foland
Sinclair hesitated, “I don’t want stuck training people I don’t think are up to it!”
“That won’t be a problem. You pick your applicant and we’ll do like Gene says. Then when it’s all over the one who clearly proves his or her self stays and heads the department the other one transfers out and finds a department they are more suited to with their skills,” Angela could feel him squirming as she spoke.
“What!” Sinclair howled.
Angela suppressed a smirk, and saw Gene doing the same. It was definitely like the good ol' days. If only it could stay this way, but no, the meeting and the rest of the universe must go on. “Is that an objection? It seems a valid plan to me. The heart of the dispute is a difference of opinion. Gene has offered a plan to test which opinion is more effective here. The less effective individual then finds another department their opinions and skills make them more suited to. In the past people have, in the end, been happier in their new departments.”
Niri leapt up, “I’ll do it! It seems fair to me.”
Sinclair sputtered, he couldn’t argue now.
It wasn’t in his makeup, and Niri knew it, that’s why she’d said what she said. “Agreed,” Sinclair muttered through almost clenched teeth.
“Since I have a fair idea of who Niri would pick, I say we put it off formally selecting the children at least until the Peterson girl has had some time to
heal.
Also, I think it would be best if you didn’t tell the children what is at stake in their tests. At least no stakes higher than their hopes of becoming factors. It would put unfair pressure on them,” Gene suggested. Angela teleported Gene one of his favorite jelly doughnuts, for again being right on cue, and with the hopes it could entice him back tomorrow. He picked it up, like it had been there all along, and sat back down, gathering his pop-pads back up. Without a further word he was back, absorbed in his notes appearing to take no more notice of anything, except the doughnut which he ate absently.
Angela just wanted to sit back and watch him eat, but the darn universe kept on working even if she didn’t want to. “Okay, moving on, any more news on the dark pattern of destruction?” Angela asked, tuning out the answer. Instead, she let her mind wander to a more interesting subject. What was the girl that started the argument like? Angela sighed softly. It wasn’t likely the girl had the potential to take over Angela’s job or even to be any help finding a replacement, but at least she’d lightened the tedium for a while. Ran herself up a pole? Angela chuckled.
- - - - - - - - - -
Yllera paid for her newspaper and started for the bus stop. The headline caught her eye, “Vice President to Hit Denver.” It made him sound like a baseball bat. The old fart had about as much personality as one. He would be speaking at her graduation ceremony. She just hoped she could stay awake through it. The man could put an insomniac to sleep.
Her eyes scanned down the page the next headline was more disturbing, “Two Bodies Found as Two More Women Disappear.”
Yllera shook her head, two weeks ago the story would have eclipsed the vice presidential visit. Then again, two weeks ago the serial kidnappings and murders had only recently hit the news. At this point, even the police might be losing interest.
Yllera glanced up in time to see the bus stopped at the stoplight. If she hurried, she could make it to the bus stop in time. On the run, Yllera folded her paper and tucked it into her bag. She made it. The bus driver smiled as she paid her fair and collected her transfer.
“You could set your alarm five minutes earlier,” The bus driver suggested.
“Or you could run late for me, Frank.” Yllera took a seat behind him.
“How’s it going? You get an ‘A’ on that paper?” He asked, glancing back at her through his mirror before pulling out.
“Yeah, the professor wrote a note about how creative picking a bus for my field observations was. The trouble is that I think he just meant weird.”
“Anthropologists, go figure,” The driver stopped at the next stop.
The bus filled with little old ladies. Dutifully Yllera stood and gave her seat to one of them. The woman sat, reminding Yllera of her grandmother.
It had been ages since Yllera last saw her grandmother smile.
She shrugged off the mood and tried to focus on school, just three finals and she was done. All that would be left would be showing up to receive her degree. Four years in college to receive a teaching degree, too bad she would probably never use it. Yllera grabbed the overhead bar to steady herself as the bus went around the corner. That shook her out of her thoughts, money time.
Yllera pulled her camera out of her bag and aimed it at the building as they passed. Then casually she tucked it back in her bag and waved a reminder at Frank that her stop was next. He waved back and stopped on cue. Yllera hopped from the bus to the curb and turned to wave goodbye to Frank, nice man but lacking a bit in the brains department. He closed the door and pulled out, five minutes ahead of schedule by Yllera’s watch. Good old Frank, was always five minutes ahead of schedule, and good old Larry, the driver of the connecting bus, always ran five minutes late.
Yllera pulled her pop-pad out of her bag as far as passers by were concerned it looked like a PDA, but it was definitely more. It linked her to Sanctuary, and was her best information tool. She tapped the screen with her thumb. It lit up showing a diagram of the inside of the building across the street. She tapped the screen again and the diagram changed, updated by the data from her scans on the bus.
Little lights of different colors had twinkled on. Some had been there before, but were now dimmer, those would be the prisoners, and by the scan they wouldn’t last much longer. Yllera knew she should call Sanctuary for back up, but the scan told her there wasn’t time to debate action or her part in it. Those women would be dead. Yllera tapped the key that would automatically send her report and tucked the pad back inside her bag, zipping it closed. Then she slung the bag around her back, and headed across the street. She fingered the charm hanging from the zipper of her coat. If things got rough all, she had to do was pull.
Yllera took a deep breath and walked up to the door of the building. She tried the knob, it was locked. What did she expect? Like they were going to leave the door unlocked with eight kidnapped women inside. The locked door deflated Yllera’s ego enough from the high of being right that she took time to think about what she was doing. Those women were most likely Agurians, like Yllera’s mother, abducted by the dark, like her mother, and probably rape victims like her mother. If all of that were the case, then Yllera perfectly fit the profile of the type of woman the dark kidnapers were after, and here she was about to walk in boldly to rescue them. Unarmed?
Yllera heard a bus pass her stop. If it was hers, it would be half an hour until the next one. She turned to look but missed the number. Maybe it was hers, maybe not either way she may as well find a way into the building. Yllera started around the building, trying to find a way in. Part of her mind had wandered to her immanent anthropology final. Not to whether or not she would pass but whether or not she’d brought the right writing implement to fill in the test. Yllera didn’t notice someone creeping up behind her until a hand tapped her on the shoulder. She almost jumped out of her skin.
“Miss you shouldn’t be here,” The man said gruffly when she turned to face him. He was handsome and dressed sharply in a dark blue suit.
“I, uhm, was just curious about this building. I ride past it every day and uhm,” Yllera floundered. She had managed a very innocent and clueless tone of voice, which the man’s face told her he believed. Until, she felt him reaching out to touch her mind. She instinctively shoved his thoughts away, shielding her own.
His face flashed from surprised to angry to frightening. He grabbed her roughly by the arm and started pulling her back towards the street and the entrance to the building. Yllera fingered the charm on her jacket.
The man reached the street and looked around at the passing cars and people collecting at the bus stop. As if he knew all she had to do was scream, he let go of her arm. “I think you should leave!”
Yllera held her urge to sprint away in check, managing an apparently fearless walking pace. She remembered a piece of advice Miranda had given her, “Don’t let them see how scared you are. If they think you’re not afraid, then they’ll be put off guard wondering what you know that they don’t.”
Yllera turned back to look at the man, to show him how 'un'afraid she was, but he was already gone.
Yllera crossed the street and joined the people waiting at the bus stop. Her heart was pounding in her throat. She pulled out her camera and sat it on her knee, casually aiming it at the building until the bus came. Once on board, Yllera grabbed her pop-pad and cancelled the command to send her report. She would have to add to it.
Then hesitantly she checked the scan. A new light moved quickly through the building, stopping briefly near each of the old ones.
They disappeared one by one until the new light came to the room with the dimming lights of the women. Then the screen froze, end of scan.
Yllera shoved the pop-pad back in her bag. That was that. She had screwed up. When her report got to Angela, Yllera would be lucky to type the transcripts of other factors’ reports. Maybe she would need a teaching certificate after all.
Yllera slid out of her seat, the test had gone well, but her day was getting worse, at least in her opinion. She had no more classes, and no excuse for not writing out that morning’s ill-fated escapade. She could take some time to cash her books in at the bookstore, but, that wasn’t going to be much help. Nothing really could prevent the horrid necessity of writing that report. All that further procrastination did was increase her certainty that it would be her last report as a factor.
Paying little attention to anything other than her feet, Yllera made her way to the ladies room. She didn’t even notice the man following her in, at least not until he locked the door. The sound of the lock shook her up and made her twitch around to look at him. It was the same man as that morning. Now she was really in trouble. She reminded herself to show no fear, though her hand went straight to her zipper pull.
“I don’t know who you are lady, but you are in big trouble!” He hissed softly, stepping towards her.
Her blood froze, she couldn’t even get her hand to yank on the charm. In her mind she was squealing in fear, her thoughts incomprehensible even to herself, except for one, “He’s dark and he’s going to get me.”
“You shouldn’t have been messing around that building! Do you even know what was going on in there or were you just blindly following your telepathic nose?” He continued in an ominously soft voice as began backing her towards a stall.
“I, I, I,” Yllera tried to answer.
“Yeah, okay, you understand how dangerous it was and will never do it again! The trouble is that I can’t leave it at that. You were jeopardizing more than yourself! You could have gotten eight other women killed too, not to mention me!” The man’s voice rose in anger.
Yllera shook her head and did a double take. It almost sounded like the man weren’t dark, but then who was he?
She must have telepathically projected her question because he answered her, “My name is Max. I’m a catalyst working for The Galactic Council. I was assigned
to investigate the disappearance of several Agurian females. If you had kept up like you were, I have a feeling that you would have joined them, Agurian or not.” He flashed a clear card with a holographic image of himself and what she took for the official seal of this dimension’s Galactic Council.
Yllera relaxed. A catalyst, that was a dimension’s internal version of a factor. “I was investigating the same thing. My name’s Yllera Vllett. I’m a tertiary factor.”
“Vllett, so you are Agurian! What in the heck is a factor?” He asked backing off a bit.
Yllera smiled, “Yeah, I am Agurian, and a factor is kind of like an inter-dimensional catalyst. We work out of Sanctuary.”
“Sanctuary, yeah I’ve heard of that. My ex-partner called those folk a bunch of lazy, paranoid, sit on their butts. He was involved when the first one of you came through, the survey factor, or whatever,” Max grumbled.