33 – Meddling with danger

Continental America Rehabilitation Facility – The CARF.

The black cube dominated the landscape like an inescapable prison from which not even light came out. Its vertical walls absorbed everything that came into contact with them, never to be seen again, and not even reflections or shadows existed on the sleek edges of the megalithic building. There was only one entrance and one exit, located at the top and at the bottom of the cube. The entrance was only accessible via helicopter, while the exit was even more mysterious in the way it functioned.

They were, obviously, magically enchanted. By whom, it was not known. Like with the agents now prisoners inside the CARF, the building itself was a lease from the higher-ups of the HDF. Same went for the Quadrangle. All Samantha had was not hers to have, it was all a loan. All mediated by the pentagon and obtained from an organization she knew awfully little about. Almost nothing, really.

She banished these thoughts from her mind. They never made her sleep any easier at night than everything else that was going on in the world as of late, and it wasn’t like she needed the extra sources of stress. Already she was living off performance enhancing drugs instead of the sleep she could no longer get, and already her mind was suffering because of it.

“This way ma’am,” The guard said, helping her get off the helicopter. An action that in other times would have been punished by relocation to the toilet cleaning staff but that now went almost unnoticed.

She went down the black stairs into the heart of the facility, following corridors that were meandering and confusing, with cells and strange rooms to the sides she could not see into. Most of them were empty, her mind supplied her with information about the place, but not all of them were. Some, although it was impossible to tell which ones, and she doubted that even the security guards or the doctors knew for sure, were inhabited. There were people in the CARF, the really dangerous kind of people. People who should never see the light of day again but who, for this or that reason, needed to be sent back out as soon as possible.

Both SpaceOps and PsyOps were of the latter kind. She knew their real identity, their real personalities and objectives. Based on this information alone she should have shot them dead the moment she first set eyes on them, but she didn’t. Not just because they were property of the HDF. But because she needed them. And she was not so morally rigid as to be above compromises if it meant getting things done for the greater good. As long as the price to pay was her own morality, that was.

The incident with PsyOps showed her that she was wrong in this assumption. There were other prices to be paid when one used compromised operatives, and she should have factored those risks in. Could she have acted differently? Perhaps, in hindsight. But not in the heat of the moment she couldn’t have.

She stood right outside the door, popping another pill into her mouth. Not having access to a teleporter meant that trips like this took an entire day to do, and wore her out more than a full day on the field. Still, SpaceOps was still compromised, and it would take a while to get him back. The same went for PsyOps, but the man was not about to get the nice treatment this time.

“Open the door.” She commanded, and the two guards at the sides nodded. They each slotted their key into the pad and twisted them, before inputting their code, fingerprint and retina scan. She followed suit by doing the same motions, and the door finally slid open.

PsyOps was levitating in the middle of the room. It was not an action of his own making, rather the man was being forced to occupy that space above the ground by the restraining mechanisms of the CARF. There was a thick plexiglass pane between his side of the room and the side Samantha was in, with three round holes smaller than the size of a fist to let the voice through. The pane was also enchanted so that magic could not pass through, as were the walls and floor.

“Who are you working with?” Sam asked, not even waiting for the man in the room to acknowledge her.

PsyOps slowly rotated in the air, showing that he still had some modicum of control over his position in space. His eyes slowly opened, forcing the woman to abide to his time and not to hers. She suppressed a sigh. PsyOps was supposedly pumped so full of drugs that he should not even be able to tell where his mind ended and where the outside world began.

“Tell me,” She said, “who is the third mage? A Time mage, isn’t he? Where is he? Who is he?”

PsyOps said nothing. All he did was twist the sides of his mouth into an ugly grin, showing some of his unnatural teeth and monstrous tongue. His disguise was failing now that he was here, restrained, and the true person behind the military façade of a man was finally coming to view.

He shrugged, wincing in pain but never letting the grin disappear from his face for even a moment.

“I don’t know who you are talking about.”

Samantha sighed yet again, massaging her forehead. She made sure the man could see how little patience she had.

“You mind readers are all the same.” She said. “So fucking arrogant and cocky. You think that just because you have seen the world from a thousand different perspectives you know how it all works. That you can play us all for fools.” She clicked her tongue. “I can confidently say that this is not the case, if your predecessors are any measure to go by. Just… talk. Spill it. There’s no benefit in delaying.”

PsyOps, aware of the trick being played on him via psychological suggestion, laughed. Samantha shrugged.

“It was worth a try.”

He scoffed. “I am offended you even thought it would work.”

“It did work in the past. It will work again.” She said, matter of fact.

“I doubt it.”

“We’ll see.”

PsyOps shook his head. “What makes you think I know anything?”

“Just call it intuition.” She said, with a pause. “Why did you post the video?”

“What video?”

Samantha took a deep breath. “It’s true, you know? The implied thing you are too afraid to ask. Telling the truth will not change your fate one bit. But,” she held up one finger. “It will reduce your unnecessary suffering by a great margin. A very noticeable margin indeed.”

“Your stupid walls cannot contain me.” PsyOps said, deciding that he had enough and turning to face the far wall.

Samantha knocked on the door to let the guards know it was time to open it again and let her out. As the mechanisms shifted, she turned around one last time to look at the cell, but all she saw was the back of the man as he floated through the air, unmoving. Shaking her head, she left. It was there, when she was on the threshold, that she thought she heard something, and stopped midway through the door even as it was closing back down.

“What did you say?”

And right when the guards outside grabbed her to move her out of the way of the heavy slab of concrete being shut close for good, she heard the reply.

“Albert. A nice name. I would keep an eye on him if I were you.”

Suddenly, Samantha’s back felt very damp, and cold. She rushed out of the CARF in a hurry, boarding the exit boat and never looking back while her mind frantically tried to make sense of what she heard. She typed onto her phone furiously.

***

“I am at home, nothing out of the ordinary.” Send text.

“Okay,” Albert said, talking to Marc who was sitting right across from him. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

Marc shoved his phone on Albert’s face. A video was playing on it. “This.”

Albert watched, and as he watched his eyes grew wide first with recognition then with worry and apprehension. He started to sweat, to the point he had to bullet time and circulate mana to calm himself down before he was ready to talk. Some of the tricks he learned during the patience mission also came in handy.

“Shit.” He said after a while.

“You recognize it, then.” Marc said. “I was 99% sure but I needed to hear it from you.”

Albert hummed. “You know what’s the technical term in these cases?”

“Being a complete idiot?” Marc said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

Albert nodded. “Yeah, let’s go with that.”

“Albert. This is serious.” Marc said with an intensity that was quite uncharacteristic of him. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“More like I was not thinking. I got carried away, okay?”

Marc shook his head violently. “Recording a video on someone else’s phone? What are you, crazy? You know it doesn’t get deleted with rewinds! We used that trick to play with fireballs literally days ago! Information carries through universes, man.”

“I know. I’m stupid, okay? I made a mistake, I got carried away and thought I could just delete everything with a simple rewind. I was too embarrassed to admit to myself that I fucked up and I escaped the situation as fast as I could... What’s the damage estimate? Your opinion.”

Marc thought about it. In truth, he knew the answer already, having thought about the problem the whole day, but he wanted to give the impression that he was thinking about it now for the first time. This way he could be ready to refute anything Albert could use as a counterargument if he needed.

“The video is out and is viral. If there are agencies and other magical operatives in the world, and they are active online, they have seen it. It looks… authentic, man. Too authentic to be CGI, even with Unreal Engine 5, GAN, and StableDiffusion it would be hard to make something this realistic. Besides, the café is now closed by the fucking police!”

“So there is no chance people will think it’s fake? I find it strange to believe.” Albert argued.

Marc was ready for this. “Oh no. People do think it’s fake. It’s not the wide public I am worried about, man.”

“Did Aubrey say anything?”

“Complete radio silence on her part.” Marc said.

“Any movement online?”

“I was getting to it. That’s the strange part. I saw nothing! Nothing. No proof of magic ever being a thing. No secret gov organizations. Nothing. You know how shit they are at keeping secrets, right? They suck, big time. Think about Watergate, think about Russiagate, think about Datagate…” Marc trailed off, listing conspiracy theories and real events.

“Okay. They are either very good…”

“…Or there’s really nothing.” Marc said. “I refuse to believe either of these things. Perhaps they bought it and thought it’s fake?”

Albert didn’t feel right about it. “Then why close down the café?”

“Public safety concerns? I went there, there is nothing that can tie you or any of us to what happens in the video. We even went to sit at another table.”

Albert nodded. “Yeah, I did it on purpose to avoid a repeat. Okay, so this might actually blow over without casualties.” He heaved a sigh. “Whooh, wow. Uh…”

“Yeah. That.” Marc said, raising his beer to his mouth and taking a big swig. “That big time. You need to be more careful man. This is not a game. You are not playing a game. And, as you can see, time rewind is not like loading an old save.”

Albert nodded. “I’ll be more careful.”

“Now,” Marc said, changing his tone completely. “With this said and done, let’s do what any other irresponsible teenager would do and let’s play games and forget all about it, shall we?”

“We are not teenagers anymore.”

“Who cares?”

Albert frowned. “Aren’t you the anxious type who can never let go of these things? What happened to you?”

“Shut up and play. It’s my coping mechanism. Either that or we go to McDonald’s!”

They laughed.

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