Citadel (Book 1): Training in Necessity (28 page)

"Help who?  What do you want?" he asked, frustrated.

"All Citadel operatives capable of high speed, long distance travel are to report to the Hub at once." Hector said, distantly.  His next statement was more personal.  "It's okay, Kelly.  They... I think they've got it under control.  Director Graham is getting everyone organized.  It shouldn't take long to figure out where this is coming from."

"What is it?  I mean, hacking the Citadel system can't be easy.  Who'd do that just for a joke?" asked Jacob Orbit, the boy he'd been thinking of as Green.

"It's not a virus." Glory said, holding up her wrist.  Next to the large cross emblem sown into the collar, Kelly could see an old fashioned digital watch.  The display just showed a bunch of eights, and it was blinking on and off at random.  "I don't know morse code, but if I did I bet I know what it'd say."

Kelly looked to Hector but he just shook his head before she could ask.

"Nope.  I'll add it to my list but I don't know it either.  She's probably right though.  My car radio's doing the same thing.  TVs, light bulbs, nothing's working right.  Even... even medical equipment."

All of a sudden, Kelly could feel his heart pounding.  She was up and out of her seat, wrapping her arms around the closest Hector before she could think about it.  Hector didn't talk about his mom often, but he'd let enough drop that she had a good idea what that last comment might mean.

"Is... is she okay?" she asked.

Hector nodded, returning the hug.  "Yeah.  The only thing she really needs are the meds.  She spends most of her time hooked up to a vital stats monitor, but... it's just to track her progress.  I hope this is under control soon though."

Glory and Jacob were staring at her.  They both looked a little freaked out by the sudden gender swap.

"He looked like he needed a hug and guys aren't allowed to do that with other guys.  It gets all weird and stuff." she explained.  They didn't reply but they did settle down.  Kelly went back to her seat.

Hector's voice went distant again.  "All Citadel personnel not required to assist, please return to your regular duties."

Glory gave a deep sigh.  It might have been relief.  "Good enough for me." she said, looking from one face to the other.  "Where were we?"

A bit hesitantly, Jacob answered.  "I think you were about to tell Trainee Protean that hi- er, her, her attacks were a bit overboard?  For a training exercise I mean.  I've got the strongest defense in my class and I was still terrified.  If she'd gotten through with just one of those..."

Glory nodded.  "Well Kelly?  Trainee Orbit is right about that.  We can go over the rest of your performance in more detail later, but I'd like an explanation first.  Why were you so damned vicious?"

Kelly blinked, not sure what to say at first.  "I... was it really that bad?" she asked Jacob.

He gave a slow nod.

"Wow." she said softly.  "Sorry, I thought I was still being pretty careful, what with Instructor Glory being right there."

"Operative or Healer," Glory cut in, "I'm not an Instructor.  I was just asked to help out because I'm at the Hub on my leave rotation.  I'd have said no but I was getting a little antsy."

"Sorry.  Operative Glory was right there and she said she could fix anything short of death..."

"Your first hit… that was harder than anything I've ever felt." Jacob told her, seriously.  "It almost took my shield down on its own.  If it had, and if you hadn't just smashed my heart, you could have broken my neck or my skull when I hit the bar."

Kelly tried to explain as best she could.  "No no no, it would've been fine."  She hadn't really been thinking about it at the time, not consciously, but after the last months of training she knew how much punishment a body could take.  "If your field hadn't stopped my hit, this would've slid right in."  She shifted her hand to its combat form, showing them the spike at its base.  She'd have to thank Jim for that this weekend when they went out for burgers again.

"It would've messed up your chest pretty bad, and wrecked your heart, but you wouldn't have been thrown back.  All the energy would just have gone right through you!" she tried to be as reassuring as possible.  When he wasn't pretending to be a drunken idiot, Jacob seemed pretty nice.

"It would've taken at least a minute for your brain to start suffering from oxygen deprivation.  Same thing with the rest of what I was doing.  I was squeezing hard enough to crack bone but not shatter it.  Your skull and brain would've been intact enough for Operative Glory to fix up.  And with the bite, it was a slow, steady pressure so I would've felt it when your field went down and not done too much damage."  Instead of relaxing, Jacob's face just got paler and paler.

"And the claws?" Glory asked, speaking real slow and careful.

"Huh?  Those were pretty much just for show, a distraction.  I mean, even without the field, all they would have done was disembowel him.  That really hurts and it makes it hard to fight, but it's not dangerous.  Not unless I catch a big vein and my foot claws aren't long enough to really do that."

She was actually pretty proud of that one.  She'd had to switch out her knees and leg muscles during the fight to use it.  There was no way she could walk around with the rear facing joints it required, not without a tail.  Of course, she wasn't about to admit the joint structure was based on a chicken's leg.

"Kelly," Operative Glory was still using that voice, like she was talking to someone real scary or unstable, "you said your Conditioning instructor was Bruce Richards..."

Kelly nodded and Jacob just looked confused.

"Who's your combat instructor?" she continued.

"Coach Achala.  He did our basic conditioning too."

"Who's that?" Jacob asked.  "I don't recognize either name, and I thought I'd been here long enough to meet, or at least hear about, most of the full time staff."

Ignoring him, Glory kept her attention on Kelly.  "You're a middle of the pack student in a class where the physical and combat courses have all been taught by Overkill Richards and the Juggernaut?" she asked.  Her voice had shifted to a kind of horrified awe and her face was worse than Jacob's had been.

Jacob's jaw dropped.  "Holy shit." he said softly.  "Okay, I take it back.  I have heard of them, it's just... I kind of figured the reputations were exaggerated.  But... Kelly, what's your top ranked fighter like?"

"Jenny?  She's actually really nice.  You'd probably like her I bet, everyone does.  She's awesome."

Ignoring the byplay, Glory asked her, "Who's the Bugger in your class?  It must be one of the best or-"

"The what?" Kelly responded, confused.

"Oh, um, never mind." Glory hurried on, changing the subject with extreme subtlety. "I think that explains your- your performance.  Let's go over what you did before the fight broke out.  If you had non-lethal options available, why did you wait so long to use them once it was obvious that Orbit was drunk and a potential danger to the civilians in the area?"

They went on like that for a while.  Once she got over her initial confusion about Kelly's unconventional fighting style, she concentrated more on the decision making.  Why had Kelly broken through the door instead of scouting the building first?  If she was going to rush in and invite an attack, why had she stopped to speak?  Why not make an attempt to get the civilians out before Orbit had attacked?

Kelly hadn't thought she was doing things wrong at the time, but that was the point.  She hadn't thought.  Some of her actions could've been better, but Glory seemed more concerned with making Kelly consider why she'd done what she'd done and what some of the consequences could have been.  She even had Jacob explain what he would've done if Kelly had acted differently a few times.

Hector spent the whole time just quietly watching.  When he finally said something, again in that same weirdly distant tone, it made Kelly wish he'd stayed quiet.

"Disruption is confirmed to be nationwide.  All Citadel personnel are advised, this is now a Class One threat with the potential to escalate."

"Escalate?" Kelly asked.  "You mean, they think this could be...?"

Hector nodded, his face grim.  "Yeah.  Worst case scenario, we're looking at an extinction level event."

Beneath the Tower

Director Shift arrived, not bothering to use the door, and took a seat.  That made three of the Citadel's five directors and one Congressional Representative at the table.  At their backs were a number of aids and assistants, including one Hector for each of the direct participants.  He would've given just about anything not to be there.

"Gentlemen, we now have a quorum of the Citadel's leadership." said Director Shift, with just a touch of ceremony.  "Does anyone have a problem with my taking the lead for the duration?"  She looked around but no one said anything.

"Very well.  Director Dione, what are we dealing with?"

Hector had met Alec Dione, the Director of Analysis, when Bruce had set him up with his 'internship.'  Alec was an older man, sixties or seventies, with a face roughened by long exposure to the sun and wispy silver hair that he kept tied back in a short pony tail.  He didn't know whether the man was a former operative or if the name was just a coincidence.  Hector had, briefly, considered doing his usual research on the man.  He'd decided against it when he realized that the director would almost certainly find out and might react poorly to the invasion of privacy.

"Widespread disruption of technology, especially electronic and computer based devices.  At minimum, this interference is occurring in every location we have a Citadel office.  It's all but certain that the same thing is happening throughout the Western States and it could be global."

"What's our response so far?" she asked.

"Gates are still up so we've been able to maintain contact.  Trainee Hive," he gave a nod towards Hector, "was present at each of our major Analysis centers.  He's a large scale duplicator whose multiple bodies share what amounts to a single mind.  We've been using him to facilitate communications.  Support provided us with a group of long range teleporters capable of carrying him to widespread locations."

"So, in short, we know how bad the problem is but we're still in contact with the bulk of our organization.  Are we all agreed that this is a danger to the nation's integrity, a Class One threat?"

Everyone gave a nod of agreement, except the third director.  Anthony Greer of Support.  Hector hadn't met him before today but he was a short, mousy looking man in his late fifties.  The Director of Support wore quiet competence like a well fitted suit.

"Melody, it's worse than that." he said.  "Support uses Empowered generated electricity to keep the Hub at full capacity in a crisis, so it isn't visible here..." he took a deep breath before going on.  "But there're widespread black outs.  Some of that is doubtless just from the interference, but not all.  We've seen a significant drop in current from the solar network."

Directors Shift and Dione were the only two in the room who didn't flinch at the implication.

The government guy was the one who actually asked the question.  "Are- are you saying the solar plants are down?"

"No Mr. Randall.  You can't just turn off a solar power plant.  If they aren't producing current, it's because they've been manually disengaged from the network.  The only reason the workers would do that..."

"Is if they were going unstable." he finished for her.  "God help us."

"Trainee Hive," came Director Shift's controlled voice, "please spread the word that this is now a Class One, with the potential to escalate to an extinction level event.  Additionally, we need to get our Turing types to those power plants.  Instruct Support to coordinate that."

Hector went pale, all of him, but he did as he was told.

"What are we doing to find the source?" she asked.

"Analysis is currently working on the theory that this is the work of a lone, off the scale Turing type." Dione told her.

"You think this is an attack?" Mr. Randall interrupted.

"No Representative, we do not.  The... nature of the messages certainly implies otherwise.  Most likely, we're looking for someone who just had their Empowerment.  He, or she, doesn't know what they're doing or how to control their new powers.  Turing types often lose themselves in the early stages of learning what they can do.  This seems to be consistent with previous incidents, just on a vastly larger scale."

"Have you been able to narrow it down?" she asked.  "Do we know where this is coming from?"

"Difficult to be certain," he grimaced, "but it looks like Carson City."

Hector couldn't help stiffening at that.

"Less than a decade since the Chemo incident." Director Shift said, quietly.  "Poor bastards."  She gave the directors of Support and Analysis a firm look, "Fine.  Who are you using to search the city?"

"Both Powers and a handful of Speed types." Director Greer answered.  "We don't have a teleporter who's familiar with the area but we do have a telepath, Carol Speaker, who can transfer visual images.  All we need is a rough location and someone that does know the place and we can end this."

The Hector nearest to Director Shift stepped forward.  "Ma'am.  It's my home town."