Nolan watched Constance walking in front of him, in particular the way she wasn't observing her surroundings, which gave him the impression that it wasn't her first visit. They were back in the dilapidated building Nolan had come through on his first day. Instead of going to the elevator Basil led them down a minor maze of dim, dirty hallways that didn't appear to have seen human feet in a very long time. At the end of the last hall he stopped at a door so rusted and corroded Nolan wondered at how it stayed in one piece. Basil stood in front of the door for a few seconds and it slid open noisily.
After ascending several flights of stairs they emerged into a familiar looking wood paneled hallway, very similar to the one Isaac had led Nolan down to his first meeting with Mr. Sound. Basil stopped in front of a pair of sliding wooden doors with narrow glass windows. Through the windows Nolan saw a confused jumble of crisscrossing black bars.
“Okay,” Basil turned to Nolan and jerked a thumb at Constance. “I'm going to take this one to see Sound. You should head down to Bill and see what he's managed to find out, if anything, and I'll join you as soon as I'm done being badgered and reprimanded. Take that elevator all the way to the bottom, take a left down the hall, then a right, another right, left at the third hallway down, and it's the second door on the left.”
“All right,” Nolan said, already mentally preparing for the eventuality of getting lost. He turned to Constance. “Nice to have met you.”
“Likewise, and you are...?” she replied with a wry smile.
Only then did Nolan realize that he hadn't bothered to introduce himself. Irredeemably embarrassed, Nolan stuck out his hand to be shook. “An idiot apparently. Nolan Savitch.”
Constance took his hand and shook it. “Constance,” she said and gave with a curious look. “Nolan... have we met? Your name sounds familiar.”
Nolan tried not to grimace at the question. It was one he hated having to answer, innocent as it always was. “It's possible. If it was more than a couple years ago I'd have no memory of it. Amnesia.”
“Amnesia? I always thought that sort of thing was reserved for bad television.”
“Apparently not.”
Basil placed his hand on Constance' shoulder and tried to steer her away down the hall. “Yes, yes. 'What's your life story? Here's my life story', I'm afraid we need to be moving along. Everyone will have all the time in the world to get acquainted soon enough. Right now I'd like to get my pride swallowing castigation over with.”
Constance shrugged off his hand like it was a particularly disgusting lump of guano. “Drama queen. Later then, Nolan.”
She favored him with same smile she'd given him in the alley and walked off down the hall.
“Don't get lost,” said Basil, with a much less pleasant smile, and he followed after her.
As he watched him hurry to catch up with her Nolan was again struck by the distinct impression that Basil wasn't nearly as put out by having Constance around as he pretended to be. He didn't want her around, which was understandable, but at the same time it was probably somewhat comforting, that feeling of familiarity that came from being in the presence of a known quantity, as unpleasant as that quantity might be. It was the nice part about having memories. And the terrible part about not having them.
Nolan slid the wooden doors apart and stepped into the elevator. He'd heard of cage elevators before but he'd never been inside one. Being able to see the concrete walls of the elevator shaft through the metal frame was a little disconcerting. Just inside the door there was a brass panel with a single black, plastic button set into its face. Nolan slid the wooden doors closed and hauled the gate into place behind it by its polished chrome handle. The black metal frame accordioned smoothly on well oiled joints and clicked into place. Nolan pressed the button and there was brief mechanical whir as some unseen motor spun to life. The elevator began its slow descent, thankfully much smoother and silent than Nolan had expected.
The slow ride down gave him a little time to think and Nolan quickly found that he, unsurprisingly, had more questions than answers. All sorts of names and references had been tossed around in his presence that day and it had left him feeling like he was watching some sort of complex operation from behind a very dirty window. He could not shake the feeling that there was something else going on beneath it all, a secret that was deliberately being kept from him. He had quashed his initial impulse to address it to anyone directly in favor of a more reserved approach. If he were being deceived then it was better that no one knew he was catching on just yet. Everyone was less apt to be on guard if they thought he was behind the curve rather than in front of it and thus more likely to inadvertently betray their true intentions. There was also the possibility that it was all just paranoia and he didn't want to come off looking like an idiot by groundlessly pointing fingers. So he'd wait, and watch, and see what developed.
After five exceedingly boring minutes Nolan got out of the elevator and immediately understood the story behind Basil's parting smile. The hall he stood in was gray and nearly featureless. Doors of a slightly darker gray lined both sides of the hall at irregular intervals. The corridor he was in stretched on almost interminably in either direction, with other corridors coming off of it seemingly at random. There wasn't a single piece of signage anywhere, not even for the exit. To Nolan it looked decidedly maze-like, which he decided was probably the point. He was reminded of a term he'd once read in a book on functional architecture: passive structural security. As he understood it the basic idea was to design a layout so complex and deliberately counterintuitive that it was virtually impossible for anyone unfamiliar with the layout to navigate it without a map, and even then they were still more than likely to get lost. Nolan made a mental note to give Basil a swift kick in the balls the next time he saw him and turned left down the hall.
A few minutes later, feeling absolutely certain that he'd deviated from Basil's given directions several times, Nolan pushed open an unmarked door and found himself, to his amazement, staring at the back of Bill Tin. Bill was hunched over at the far side of a large, brightly lit room filled with computers and other complex mechanisms that Nolan couldn't begin to name. He had the sleeves of his white, button up shirt rolled all the way up to his biceps. His thinning hair was damp and glistened with sweat. He was muttering angrily under his break and tinkering intently with something on the counter in front of him.
“Hello?” said Nolan.
Bill turned sharply and dropped something on the floor. “Shit! Sorry, just in the middle of making a few calibrations. Welcome back Nolan, I'll be with you in just a sec.”
Nolan walked over to where Bill was working and stepped up to the counter. His eyes widened when he saw what it was Bill was working on. The thing that Nolan had taken for metal bracelet when they'd first met was lying in two halves on the counter and looked to be more of a cuff than a bracelet. The inside of the cuff was lined with tiny wires and sharp, pin like connectors. The pins were tinged with red at their tips. Bill was bent over his right arm, which was laid out on the counter, jabbing something the looked like a television remote with a screwdriver stuck onto the end of it into a thick web of cables and small hydraulics emerging from the flesh of his wrist.
“There,” Bill said finally,” that ought to do it.”
Bill lifted his arm and twiddled the fingers of his metal hand in the air before his face. The digits flexed smoothly on steel hinges, controlled by hydraulic pistons that ran through the insides of the knuckles. The palm and the back of the hand were comprised of a series of interlocking plates that met and separated as the it moved. Through the gaps in the plates Nolan could see a faint blueish light that pulsed rhythmically. Wires and tubes snaked from inside the hand and disappeared beneath skin of his wrist. Bill picked up the metal cuff and clamped it over his wrist with a wince.
“It's something isn't it?” said Bill with a grin. “Made it myself when I lost my hand. And in case you're wondering, I assure you the irony of someone with my name having a metal hand is not lost on me.”
Nolan laughed. “It honestly hadn't occurred to me.”
“It would have eventually, I'm sure.” Bill cast a glance over Nolan's shoulder. “No Basil?”
“He'll be along I think. He had some business to conduct with Mr. Sound.”
“Just as well then, you and I have some matters to discuss ourselves. Come on over here.”
Bill led Nolan over to the left side of the room. The counter there was covered with piles of unidentifiable parts and components. Bill cleared a space on the counter by shoving several of the piles off to one side and opened the top drawer beneath it. From the drawer he removed two items and set them on the counter. The first was a thin black rectangle with metal pins emerging from all four edges. The second was clearly some kind of firearm, though it was unlike any Nolan had ever encountered. The barrel was a metal cylinder with thickly insulated wires that snaked around it, occasionally disappearing into holes along either side. It was bolted onto a grip that was completely covered in texturized rubber, as was the trigger mechanism. The phrase that immediately sprang to his mind was “steampunk raygun”.
Bill picked up the black rectangle and held out his other hand. “Let me see your phone for a second.”
“You're not going to spit on it are you?”
Bill laughed. “So Basil remembered to put a protection spell on it then? No, no spitting, just a little upgrade.”
Nolan handed his phone over to Bill, who flipped it over and pressed the black square of plastic against the back. The tips of the metal pins curled inward, piercing the hard plastic backing of the phone, and disappeared into its innards. The square of plastic settled down against the back of the phone until it was flush with surface and almost invisible.
“There,” said Bill, handing Nolan's phone back to him. “Now you're hooked into our network. Any information in our database, that you have security clearance for, can be accessed from that phone. You can also communicate directly with the main office or any other agent in the field. Take a look.”
Nolan unlocked the phone and brought up the home screen. At the bottom of the screen, beneath the other icons, was a symbol identical to the one on the card Mr. Sound had given him, a black square with a white circle in the center and a black dot in the center of that. He tentatively tapped the icon. The screen went blank for few seconds and then a list of menu options appeared:
Communications
Database
Voice Memo
Photo Record
Video Record
Beneath the menu there was a large, bright red circle.
“Communications will take you to the directory where you can contact anyone on the network. Database gets you into the database, obviously. Field Reporting will allow you to record audio, photos, or videos and upload them directly your personal database on our server.”
“What's the red button for?”
“Panic Button. If you're in trouble just press that and your phone will send out a distress signal along with your current location.”
“No logins or passwords?” asked Nolan.
“No need. In addition to linking you to our network that device on the back acts as a biometric sensor, keyed to you alone. No one else will be able to access our system through that phone. The icon won't even show up if anyone else is holding it.”
Nolan put the phone to sleep and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. “That's convenient.”
The door at the back of the room opened suddenly and both men looked up to see Isaac filling the doorway. He wore the expression of a man who has suddenly found himself in a situation he was not entirely prepared for.
“Ah,” he said, giving Nolan a confused smile, “there you are! I, uh, Basil called down saying he was worried you might have gotten lost. But here you are, right where you ought to be.”
“Yep, though to be honest I'm as surprised as anyone by that.”
“Well I'll let him know you found your way. Carry on gentlemen.” Isaac ducked quickly back out of the room.
“Moving right along,” Bill picked up the strange firearm and held it up to the light, “we have this guy. The Mark II Ambient Energy Projectile Pistol, standard issue firearm for all field agents.”
“Why do I have the feeling that you're about to dump a whole bunch of science on me?”
“Probably because I am.”
“Wonderful,” said Nolan, trying not roll his eyes.
“Don't worry, you'll like this. It's secret science,” Bill's eyes grew almost comically wide and he twirled the finger of his free hand through the air like a magician about to perform his greatest trick.
Bill flipped a switch on the side of the barrel with his thumb and a metal tube slid out of the back of the gun. The tube was slotted along the sides and Nolan could see a row of small, shiny cylinders lined up end to end inside it. Bill pushed on the end of the tube and a single cylinder popped out into his waiting hand. He handed it to Nolan who turned it over experimentally in his palm. It was actually two cylinders, one being seated snugly into the slightly larger opening of the other. Etched into the side were symbols similar to the one's he had seen on Basil's knife. It also felt like it was vibrating very slightly.
“That's the bullet and this is the clip, which holds twenty rounds.”
“It doesn't look much like a bullet.”
“Which I will now endeavor to explain,” Bill intoned with a scholarly solemnity that was only slightly ruined by his overly excited grin.
“Inside that cylinder is a glass pellet containing a very unique type of energy. I take it Mr. Sound explained the basics of multi-dimensional theory to you?”
“If by that you mean he told me that there are other dimensions then yes.”
“Good enough. Now, in between every dimensions there is a void that is inhabited by something we call Ambient Inter-Dimensional Energy. Very dangerous stuff. Highly volatile, difficult to control, and, in large enough quantities, completely lethal to any living thing, even big nasties like Nyarlathotep out there.”
Nolan looked down at the innocent looking cylinder in his hand and fought back the urge to fling it across the room. Bill saw the look on his face and smiled at him reassuringly.
“Don't worry, the energy in there is safely contained in a glass pellet. Besides, it wouldn't do much to you in its present state anyway. The problem with A.I.E., at least from a practical standpoint, is that it isn't much use on its own. It tends to just dissipate when it isn't contained and you'd have to be completely immersed for it to do any real damage to you. But something very interesting happens when you run an electrical current through it; the A.I.E. follows the flow of current wherever it goes. Incidentally, that's how the Tesla Cannons work. That pink stuff you see flying out of the business end is A.I.D.E riding the flow of the current produced by the gun.”
“The Mark II's bullets work on the same principle, after a fashion. Once the bullet enters the chamber it's given an electrical charge. Then, when the bullet is fired and contacts the target surface, the cylinder compresses, breaking the pellet, and...”
“The A.I.E. follows the electrical current as it transfers into the target.”
“Gold star for the new guy. Precisely. Because of the size of the bullet the energy in a single round isn't lethal to anything bigger than house cat but it will put a grown man out for a couple hours. So long as it's not someone like Isaac, who could probably shrug off one of these without even blinking.”
“Do they fire like regular bullets? I don't see a primer or anything.”
“Nope, no gunpowder. The bullets are fired using an electromagnetic propulsion system in the barrel.”
“Like a rail gun.”
“Is that sciency talk I hear escaping your lips?”
“I pick up the occasional piece of useful knowledge from time to time.”
Nolan handed the “bullet” back to Bill, watched him load it back into the clip, and return the clip to its place in the back of the gun.
“Well, yes it is like a rail gun, sort of. The principle is the same but the power supply in the gun isn't sufficient to propel the bullet at a very high velocity. Effective range is only about 50 meters, anything more than that and there isn't enough force to break the pellet. That's actually one of the nice things about this weapon as opposed to a regular gun; there's a lot less chance of collateral damage, so you don't have to worry quite so much about where your rounds are going.”
“Speaking of which, exactly how careful do I need to be? You said the energy was lethal in a large enough amount. What happens if I hit the same target with multiple rounds?”
“You mean could you kill someone with this weapon? In theory yes, but you'd have to hit them several times in very rapid succession, and your shots would have to hit close to some kind of vital spot, like a heart or brain. I designed this as more of a defensive weapon, something to keep an agent in the field safe should they run into trouble. When we want to kill things we send in the big guns.”
“You designed this?”
“Yessir. That is my contribution to the Tin family legacy of creating new and interesting ways to kick the crap out of bad things.”
“Any particular reason you waited until now to give this to me? I've been running around 'in the field' all day. Sure Basil was there and all, but still...”
“Because Mr. Sound doesn't like giving new agents weapons and such until he's sure they aren't going to rabbit on us,” said Basil from the doorway. He was alone and looking even less positive about life than he had before.
“You thought I was going to run off on you?”
“There's really no way to be sure how someone will react to the job until you put them out there. Since you made it through the day without completely losing your mind I'd say we're in good shape.”
Bill handed Nolan the gun. Nolan hefted it in his hand as he sighted it at the far side of the room. It was heavier and more solid feeling than he had expected.
“Gah,” Basil drew his face in a mask of disgust, “will you put that thing away?”
“Hard to believe you have such a problem with guns.”
“Anyone who doesn't, in my opinion, has a screw loose somewhere. I understand their purpose and I accept their necessity in our work but I don't have to like it.”
“Hold on a sec,” said Bill. “I've got a shoulder holster for that around here somewhere... ah, here we are.”
Bill opened the bottom drawer under the counter and pulled out a contraption of black straps and buckles with a tooled leather holster dangling from it. Nolan took off his jacket and, after a few minutes acquainting himself with it, managed to get it situated with little need for adjustment. He slipped the pistol into it's holster and looked down at himself.
“I feel like Buck Rogers.”
“I was going to say Rick Deckard.”
“Which I will happily take as a compliment.”
“So you should.”
Bill waved Nolan and Basil over to one of the computer consoles. “I like banter as much as the next guy, but seeing as how I'd like to get out of here sometime tonight, what do you say we get down to business fellas?”
“Actually you can save all that for tomorrow,” said Basil.
“What's tomorrow?” said Bill.
“Mr. Sound has already reviewed the initial lab results and, taking into account the report I just gave him, has decided to pull us all in for a strategy meeting in the morning, 9:00 sharp.”
“Just as well. Lab work isn't telling us much right now that we haven't already figured out.”
“I figured as much. Nolan? Since you are sans vehicle at the moment Mr. Sound said you can go ahead and grab a car from the garage, take whatever one turns you on, keys are in the glove box.”
Basil turned back to the door and started walking. “Head on home boys, get some rest, 'cause tomorrow promises to be yet another exciting day in Crazy Town.”
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