Sunset Volume 2: High Noon

SolCorp Pharmaceutical’s Kyiv, Ukraine Office. Saturn Department.

Kyiv’s Saturn office suite was small, but that didn't mean it hadn’t immediately become Anise’s favorite place in the whole world. The department was made up of five offices at the end of one hallway on the third floor, one of which they’d turned into a breakroom. Slowly, she was getting to know the agents there. Her fellow Saturn agents.

Nina was still her guide, the one who was showing her the ropes. Nina was a healer, but after a particularly bad injury that resulted in PTSD, she had been taken out of the field. There were two others working admin and one field agent between assignments. Anise had been told there were more, but most of the agents who worked out of Kyiv were out on undercover assignment, and she’d either meet them eventually or she wouldn’t. Saturn didn’t have the same kind of community feeling as other departments. Agents often worked alone for years on end with little contact except from their handler.

And that's what she was learning to be for now: a handler. Someone who communicated with undercover agents, took their reports, and analyzed them.

“What are you doing here?” Nina asked as she sat down at the small desk they’d given her, tucked into a corner in Nina’s office.

“What do you mean?” she replied.

Nina shook her head at her. “Isn’t your first Post-Breathe thing today?”

“Yeah, but I don't have to be there until nine.” Anise entered her agent number and password to log in. It never got old that she could do that.

“Anise, it’s eight o’clock.”

She huffed, turning to look at her. “Give me a break. I’m fasting, so I don’t exactly need time to eat breakfast.”

Nina was thankfully silent for a moment. “Are you nervous?”

She could barely tell what she was, herself. “It’s just a calibration. I’m supposed to feel a little funky and sore afterward, but they aren’t altering anything. I don’t know. I don’t get how it works.”

“Me neither,” she said, turning back to her own work. “That’s the new method they do here. It’s not a one-off like out west.”

“Whatever it takes, right?”

The hour flew by and before she was ready, Anise found herself in the small Venus procedure room in a hospital gown. The room was a flurry of Venus agents. She recognized Dr. Madison, the head of Kyiv’s Venus office, having met once before, but she didn’t really know anyone else there. It made her think about how she barely knew anyone in the building. Anise realized those new acquaintances were her closest friends on the entire continent and she suddenly felt small.

The door opened and Mark walked in, prompting her to sit up. The Venus agents deferred around him, making space.

“Hey.” She said it like a question.

He gave her a thin smile. “Figured you wouldn’t mind if I was here for support.”

The bolstering effect of the gesture took her by surprise, and it felt as though every vertebrae in her spine had turned to steel and nothing in the universe could knock her down. “Yeah,” she smiled back. “Is that okay?” She glanced back at the Venus staff.

“They do what I tell them to,” he replied simply. He walked around behind the gurney to stand by her head. Anise could either crane her neck to follow him or lay down and look up to keep him in sight so she laid down.

“Excuse me, sir,” the lead Venus agent said as she approached with an oxygen mask. “We’re ready.”

Mark nodded to Anise and then to the agent. “So are we.” She felt ready. She wasn’t alone.

“Just going to sedate you now,” the Venus agent said, placing the mask on her face.

Anise breathed deep and went under.

---

Natal, Brazil.

The cut over Alex’s eye wouldn’t stop goddamn bleeding. He blinked and shook his head, trying to clear his view. After a couple more shocks and a punch that bounced his unprotected head against the door, Alex decided to quit trying to get the door open and stay quiet. He leaned his sore face on the cool glass and watched the trees roll by against the sunset. The SUV was making some unnatural noises, jerking and coughing when they accelerated. He was glad Alyosha had managed to fuck them up a bit.

“He okay?” the driver called over his shoulder to the electric-skinned shithead next to him. Apparently he’d been enough trouble to them that when he took a break, it got this guy worried. Either raising hell or passed out. Damn right. Alex sniffed. He liked that.

“He’s fine,” she scoffed, and shifted to nurse the arm that Alyosha had put a bullet in. “Banged up, but fine.”

“Well, keep him quiet, but take it easy. He’s technically a minor.” Alex gathered he was their team leader. He had that cocky look on his face and the others shut up when he talked.

“You know he shot you both, right?”

The driver clicked his tongue. “Yeah.” The agent pitched his voice for Alex to hear, with that change of tone people used when talking to a kid that made Alex’s lip pull back. “But Sol ruled that it’s not your fault what happened.”

Whatever Alex had locked down to keep himself still snapped into pieces. “Not my fault?” he burst, straightening up and flinging more blood onto the seat.

The driver just said, “Janice,” and the agent beside Alex started charging up her stupid arms again. Alex shut his eyes and jerked back involuntarily, rounding his shoulders defensively and swearing, mostly at himself.

The car chugged and shook. The agent who’d shot Alex turned around. “Jesus, your arm’s still bleeding?” He turned to the driver, “We need to pull over so I can treat that.”

Alex curled himself into as much of a ball against the door as one can when your arms are tied behind your back. A medic who can’t get hurt. Very funny.

“We need to grab a new car anyway,” their leader nodded. “This one’s not going to make it to the rendezvous point.” Alex kept his face tucked down against his shoulder. They would need to transfer him. He pulled his legs up and tucked his feet under himself to get a feel for the leg restraints. They were metal leg cuffs and he didn’t have a lot of hope for getting out of them, but he could maybe step through his handcuffs if his shoulder could take it.

With every mile they drove, Alex’s muscles tightened as he watched the agent ride in silence next to him, one hand clamped over her arm. At some point, he noticed his cheeks were wet but he couldn’t even properly reach his face with his shoulders to wipe it off. The feel of it clinging to his skin made the knotted up shame in his stomach tighten.

It was fully dark by the time they pulled into a driveway next to a car in front of a small home without any lights on. The driver asked the agent in the front seat, “Can you do this here while I get that thing started?”

He nodded and the agent in charge got out of the car. Alex’s heart was a hammer against his ribs. The other agent got out and Alex felt the shunk of the door unlocking with the whole length of his spine. Janice was watching him. Alex decided to cry whatever silent tears he had been swallowing. Let her see how defeated he was, how small and young and bruised. She looked away when the other agent opened her door and Alex took that brief second to shift himself up to get his twisted hands on the door handle, wincing against the awful pain in his left shoulder. He froze like that, head low and defensive.

“Let me see it,” the agent said, pulling a pair of gloves from a medical bag.

“It went right through,” she hissed as he cut through the sleeve of her shirt.

He pursed his lips and hummed as he examined it. Alex’s muscles were tight as a bowstring, the tendons in his legs corded too rigid to even shake. He could feel his heartbeat in his toes. He waited.

“You’ll be fine,” the agent told her, bending to give her a swift kiss on her hair before leaning down. Alex’s legs jumped and he grimaced, trying to keep still. He watched the agent tap some powder onto her arm and ready a strip of white cloth to bind it. She glanced at Alex, then nodded to the medic without saying anything. Alex and Janice both took a deep breath in and held it. Leaning in, the agent yanked the cloth tight enough to make her yelp.

Alex went off like a slingshot. Bracing his back against the door, he kicked his legs out, planting his feet right onto her arm and the medic’s hand, while at the same time, he worked the door handle with frantic, pained clawing until it gave. His push off her arm sent him flying out of the car. His head cracked against the bottom edge of the door and he landed hard on his back. Alex coughed, fighting for breath. The pain in his bad shoulder shocked through him and the vibration it caused in his skull made it feel numb. He ground his teeth against the searing burn as he rotated his arms under his tucked feet and in front of him. He shoved himself upright with his forehead pressed hard to the dirt, his bound hands struggling to help. There was shouting and cursing behind him. With a mad amalgamation of hopping, scrambling, and falling, Alex launched himself into the tall brush beside the road. He forced himself down flat, under the thick tangle of rough plants that pulled at him whenever he moved. For a split second, he thought of the cats back in Reno, who would wedge themselves deep and inaccessible within trash heaps when chased. Alex kept crawling.

With skinned elbows and knees, he fought his way through the brush, deeper and deeper, where it was dark and the dirt was cold. The leaves against his face trembled, then shuddered as if in a breeze, but Alex couldn’t feel any wind. A force gripped his body and plucked him, fighting and flailing, into the air and held him suspended four feet off the ground. Seeing the expanse of air below him, his stomach flipped and Alex held himself still. It felt like a pair of strong hands were pinning him up, if hands could hold every inch of him simultaneously. Illuminated by the lights of their newly stolen car, the team leader stood with one hand extended in the air, aimed in Alex’s direction. Alex had never been so satisfied that he’d shot this guy, though the agent’s face showed he was more upset than Alex had expected. The others were nearby, panting hard. The guy had the bean bag shotgun back in hand.

“Clear out the trunk,” the leader growled. He shifted his arm, and Alex’s world reeled as he was swung end over end to hang upside-down in the air. He heard the sound of the trunk opening and kicked his feet reflexively, but there was nothing to kick. The blood was starting to snap and sing as it pooled in this head. He waited to be set down, trying to ready his limbs to spring up again, but it didn’t come. They let him hang there until he was dizzy-sick and purple-faced. Then he let Alex drop the last few feet into the trunk of the car and the others slammed the lid. He gave the side a few weak thumps before the pain of pins and needles in his arms was too overwhelming to do anything except roll onto his side and sway with the movement of the car as they drove away.

---

Gareth followed Hannah and Reeve off the plane.

“Can you drive?” Reeve asked him without looking back.

“Yeah.” Gareth picked his pace up to a jog, not unhappy to put a minute of space between them. Reeve’s mind was…pervasive. Gareth felt it everywhere, like he was air. He’d seen him on his hardcore uppers before but this was different, like he’d let some part of himself off the leash. He got in and started the car up. Gareth felt totally fucked. It wasn’t a new feeling, but it was a feeling that kept getting stronger as time went on, and one that Alyosha’s blood on his jeans seemed to accelerate. For once in his life though, it wasn’t his fault. He thought that ought to make it easier, more out of his hands and along for the ride. It didn’t.

The others got in. Reeve’s eyes were sad when he looked at Gareth—that look he got when he knew what others were thinking about him. Gareth shifted into gear, avoiding eye contact. “Where we headed?”

“Back to the main road.”

Gareth took them past the wrecked car, past a row of homes with bewildered faces in dark windows. He kept his jaw shut tight, uneasy about what he might say to Reeve if he didn’t.

As they reached the strip, Reeve told him, “Take a left up here.”

“Where is he?” Hannah asked, leaning forward, crossed arms against the back of Gareth’s seat.

“I don’t know,” Reeve admitted after a silence. “They’ve covered some ground and he’s out of reach. I can only get a fuzzy direction.” Reeve looked around, gauging their position to the ocean. “He’s northwest.”

Gareth drove up the dark coast. There was a flash in his rearview and he looked up to Hannah stripping down. He didn’t pay much attention until Reeve turned to look at her. She was contorted to reach her bandage and was slowly peeling it off.

“What are you doing?” Reeve protested, turning around in his seat. Her face in the mirror was scrunched, brows lowered.

“We might need me. Can’t go invisible like this.”

Gareth shifted in his seat, antsy and wanting to pull over. “Hannah, what the fuck!”

“I’m full up on antibiotics and,” she pulled the last strip off with a grimace, “it’s closed.”

“Jesus Christ,” Gareth groaned and focused on the road. There weren’t many street lights and the way was narrow. He hadn’t seen a single house with lights on yet. Reeve could have stopped her. But he didn’t, and that was probably good, because Gareth wasn’t sure what he would have done if he started pulling that shit.

They drove without talking for a long time. The idea of fiddling with a radio didn’t feel right.

Reeve spoke into the silence, “I never meant for anything like this to happen.” Gareth wanted to shove a fucking shoe in Reeve’s mouth. Anything to get him to shut the hell up. He thought it loudly.

“Stop it,” Hannah said gently. Which, to Gareth, was way too kind and understanding.

“If you had known what I did—no, you wouldn’t have gone through with those missions. You’re not like that.”

“Stop it!” she blurted at a yell. “You can’t just have arguments out loud with my thoughts. You don’t get to do that!”

“Oh, goddamnit,” Gareth muttered, gripping the steering wheel. Reeve took a breath to talk, but Hannah broke in.

“I get that you want to have the conversation and explain yourself and defend yourself, but sort of fuck you!” Gareth glanced back, but she was invisible. “The only person that conversation makes feel better is you, and I’m not really in the mood to make you feel better right now. And if you really want to have the conversation, you should wait until Alex is here with us! I think you owe him that much.”

Gareth blew out a long breath. It wasn’t fun being around a telepath when you’re pissed, but he could admit it probably sucked more for the telepath.

Reeve motioned to the side of the road. “Gareth, pull over.”

“No.” If they were gonna fight, they were gonna fight on the move.

“We just passed Neptune’s car,” he argued, trying to keep his voice level.

“Shit.” Gareth slowed and pulled off onto the dirt and tall brush. “Alex?”

Reeve shook his head. “He’s not there. He’s still,” he pointed up the coast, “that way. I can’t sense anyone in the house, but…”

“I’ll check it out,” Hannah’s voice came from the backseat. “Told you we might need me.”

“Be careful.”

Gareth waited, tense, gun in his lap.

“There’s no one there,” Reeve said at last, voice a little distant, communicating with Hannah. “Their SUV’s banged up. They probably ditched it and stole a different car.”

“Now what?”

“We follow Alex’s signal. It’s stronger. We’re getting closer.”

The back door opened and he heard Hannah get in. “You get all that?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s blood in their backseat.”

No one spoke for a moment.

“He’s alive,” Reeve said in that condescending tone he used when he was trying to comfort someone.

“You know they’re just leading us someplace remote so they can kill us.”

“Yes,” Reeve enunciated slowly, “but that hasn’t worked yet.”

“So let’s go.”

---

Sol LAHQ. Uranus Department.

Emmett narrowed his eyes at the ceiling of his new office in LA as the lockdown siren sounded. It was the second lockdown since he came to LAHQ and he wasn’t in the mood, and not only because the piercing siren was pitched to stomp directly on the base of your skull.

As the siren blasts were getting longer and closer, becoming one long drone that signaled for everyone to get inside the closest office, Emmett got up and made his way out into the hallway. Emmett waved with a smile at a black-clad Neptune agent shouting at him, and walked into Marek’s office across the way.

Marek was bent over the hamster cage set up by his desk and gave him a confused look. “Hey, you," he yelled to carry above the din. He pointed to the cage. “Baguette really hates that sound.”

“She’s not alone," he bellowed back.

The alarm cut out. Now people had to wait for a final short blast to signal that the lockdown was over, which could be in minutes or hours, depending on what the problem was.

“So, did you just want some company?” Marek asked, giving his tiny, precious furball one last concerned glance.

"Not exactly. Department heads get an alert with the lockdown code and location, right?"

"Yeah." He dug his phone out of his pocket and checked. "It's another knack misfire."

Emmett sighed. "They really send all the worst off students to LA, huh?" The last lockdown had been for a student whose telekinesis had gone haywire.

"They do, but this is in Jupiter, two floors up. So, an adult this time."

That happened sometimes, too. Few people had perfect control of their knack 100% of the time. Stick that in a pressure cooker of work stress and personal relationship drama, and bam.

"Can you pop me there?"

Marek's eyebrows went up. "In a lockdown?"

"Nevermind. Just bail me out or whatever if you have to.”

“Emmett—”

But he was already out the door. Even at HQ, they didn’t have enough Neptune agents to patrol every single hallway at every given moment, and it just so happened that there was no one watching theirs right then. They weren’t that far from the stairs, and he wasn’t about to take an elevator. Ducking into the stairwell, he slowed down as he began to climb. Sound carried more there. There was a faint but distinct groaning coming from the pipes somewhere beyond the walls. Shit.

The lights weren’t on at the next landing, and he was climbing by the dim red emergency lighting only. A bad sign. He reached the second floor and, knowing he wouldn’t be as lucky sneaking through this hall, left the stairwell.

The hallway was dim except for emergency lighting, but there were small groups of Neptune agents in full Blacks staggered down the hall. A dozen doors down, a larger group was dealing with something he couldn't make out.

The group nearest him turned to stare as he opened the door. Emmett flashed his badge at them quick enough it couldn’t be read, and continued on.

“Hey,” one agent shouted. “You can’t be here.”

“I’m here to help,” Emmett told him, cool as could be, despite feeling the agent’s shock and anger echoing around the walls through his empathy. “Trust me, you want my help.”

The agent moved to intercept him and pointed behind him. “Get back down the stairs. Someone will escort you to a room.”

“What are you going to do, arrest me?”

By way of answer, three agents put hands on him in a tight grip, forcing his arms behind his back. He struggled as much as he could. He was making a scene, but he didn’t care.

“First of all,” Emmett growled loudly. “I’m just going to assume that not calling me ‘sir’ was an oversight. And second, you’re going to be really sorry when they find out that you’re the one who kept me from helping.”

“Everyone must remain out of the halls during a lockdown, for everyone’s safety,” the first agent lectured loudly.

“I would, if you all would do your jobs properly,” he muttered. The more he didn't budge, the more irritated he could feel they were. The agents were beginning to move him backward when he heard someone call out above the other voices.

“What the hell is going on down there?”

The figures parted for a man in Blacks to walk through them. His head was uncovered, and Emmett recognized Penn Harris from his directory photo. In that group of people charged up with outrage, Penn was a shade calmer. Emmett felt the lightest touch of telepathy and then nothing.

“Sir,” the first agent replied, squaring his shoulders. “Uranus’ Third is refusing to return to his office.” So he did know who he was.

“I see that.” Penn came to halt in front of them and met Emmett’s eyes. He was taller than Emmett, but that wasn’t something that would make him shrink. “Do they do lockdowns differently in Chicago?”

It could have been funny. “Cleanup in Chicago knows better than to make matters worse during an incident, so I was coming to keep you from making more work for me later.”

“What—” Penn tried, but Emmett was on a roll now.

“It’s enough work to repair any damages done by whoever has just had the worst day of their year, but it’s fairly annoying to have to clean up after Cleanup. In the last lockdown—which, you’ll recall, required two new sinks and three new toilets be installed—your people allowed the water to pour out from broken pipes for long after the student had been removed. That water has to go somewhere, and you may not realize it, but around here everyone’s floor is someone else’s ceiling.”

“Well, I’m sorry that—”

“In addition to that, in order to work safely around the broken light fixtures, your agents shut off power to two floors of Terre instead of just the one section of the grid required. As a result, teachers had to keep two dozen kindergarteners calm and entertained in a dark, windowless room with no electricity for three hours. Which is why, if I’m ever in real trouble, I’ll be calling a Terre agent.”

Penn blinked at him. "So Marek is the laid back one in the friendship, is what you're saying."

"Oh, you have yet to see me wound up."

Penn broke eye contact. "Let him go."

The agents released him and Emmett took a moment to roll his shoulders and straighten his sleeves. "So what happened up there?"

Penn's expression was neutral, but Emmett could feel a sense of bewilderment. "Magnetic field manipulator."

Emmett nodded, resolved to make it seem like this happened all the time. "So we've got a big ol' ball of twisted metal up there?" He didn't put extra emphasis on the word 'we,' but he didn't include it by accident either.

"Yup."

"Is the floor buckling?"

A flicker of doubt crossed his face. "Not to my knowledge."

"I'll check," he said and started walking. Penn moved with him as the others stared on. Emmett continued, "Let me properly shut off this section's water and electricity, and then I'll check for structural issues."

"You personally?" Penn asked, as he stopped to unlock the maintenance closet located at the top of the main stairway of each floor. There was a wall panel that had three long columns of black switches and a line of snaking pipes with blue shutoff valves, which Emmett immediately turned closed. Penn watched him. "You can't have memorized the whole building's grid in a week."

"That's an interesting theory," Emmett commented, selecting the four switches for this hallway. “Now let’s take a look at that floor.”

He started walking back out to the hallway, but Penn grabbed him by the arm. “Alright. Hold on.”

He stopped and faced him. “Problem?”

“You—” He huffed. “You can check the flooring after we’ve cleared out. It’s not like if the floor is fucked we can just opt out of cleaning. But you can’t be out here.”

“Well, I am,” he countered.

Penn held his eyes. “Emmett, I’m serious. When that siren goes off, these hallways become part of the field, and you do not have clearance to work in the field. If you’re out here again, I will have my agents carry you out bodily to spend lockdown with your least favorite person, and I'm a telepath, so let's not pretend I don't know who that is.”

Emmett cocked his head. "Okay but everyone knows who that is, and if you stick me with Jupiter I'll just spend the whole time brow beating him over the budget until he begs your agents for the sweet release of—"

“What I can do,” Penn cut in loudly over him to make him stop, “is listen to you about what measures should be taken to reduce damages." Penn leaned forward. It was too dark to get a good view of his eyes, but Emmett's empathy was giving him a decent read. Enough to know he was holding the guy’s interest in more ways than one.

"If you stay inside during the next lockdown," Penn continued, "I can promise that, unless I am actively physically engaged, I will take your call."

That deal was a slightly better outcome than Emmett had bargained for when he set out.

He let a smile tease at his lips. "I believe that you'll take my call," he replied, letting his tone stray into flirtatiousness. "And I'm an empath, so let's not pretend I don't know why."

Penn stared, a little dumbfounded.

"I should get back to my office to start the paperwork on this," Emmett went on. When he tried to start walking again, Penn let him go. "Don't fall through the floor, okay?" he called without looking back.

The other Neptune agents in the hall shifted restlessly, ready to grab him again, but Penn never gave the order.

Emmett smiled to himself. He could work with this.

***