"Why didn't they listen to you earlier?" Ellis asked. They were in a car, stopped somewhere near Delaware. Bennet was driving them, but at present, he was buying lunch from a gas station. Hence, Ellis' sudden verbosity.
Daniel shrugged.
"I mean, I didn't know any of this stuff about 'sources' and the increase in Class II's" Ellis continued, "And I was working just as long as you were. And some of this—" she struggled for words, tapping the folder. She had been reading Daniel's collected notes, which it turns out, Henderson had filed in the New York office and abandoned. No one had read them until Daniel started referencing them in a meeting. Now they'd made several copies, and Ellis was getting caught up.
"Some of this is real, you know? Don't get angry. I mean that some of this is immediately important to the people they're rushing across the country. So why didn't Henderson pass it on?"
She glanced out of her side of the car, verifying that Bennet was still in the gas station's 7/11. "Why wasn't anyone else asking these questions?"
Daniel glanced as well. He could probably trust Bennet, but he didn't.
"The Agency is a federal service" he said. Ellis didn't get it. "Their budget is up for renewal every four years. Probably not at congress, it's a line item there, 'National Defense' or something. But someone looks at The Agency and decides if they are going to get funding, power, authority."
It clicked. Ellis swore. She was definitely getting more comfortable around Daniel. He wasn't sure how to feel about that yet. "They get funding for stopping occurrences."
"So that everyone can pretend they aren't happening. Our job is to make awful things vanish so that the world can just keep on moving."
"The public knows that this stuff is happening." Ellis said.
"In Thailand, South Africa, Bosnia." Daniel shrugged. "It always happens in countries that are far away, aren't connected to their worlds. Why would they assume it was happening here?"
Ellis checked on Bennet again, a hulking football player's silhouette inside the store windows. He was paying at the register. "What if one of us went public. Someone with the trace?" she asked.
Daniel froze.
There's no way she knew about the shooter in San Francisco. Unless he gave it away now. "The Agency would stop them. It might even be our job to do that."
Ellis frowned, her bangs partly obscuring a creased forehead. "You just lied to me."
Daniel decided he didn't like how comfortable she was getting talking to him. "Stay out of my head."
Ellis persisted. "You should trust me. I knew you were lying about something in the interrogation room, and I gave you room to talk your way out of it."
Is that what she called it? Daniel took a deep breath. She couldn't read his thoughts, she didn't know he was lying, only that he was nervous.
She was trying to keep him off balance. "I'm already keeping your secrets. I know your Trace is better than you tell them" she said. Which fed a suspicion he'd had for a while.
It wasn't cut and dry, if she was reading his emotional reactions she could tell when he noticed something, even if she didn't know what.
Daniel looked her in the eye, watching Bennet walk over in his peripheral vision. Thirty seconds. Enough time to test a theory.
He concentrated as hard as he could on a visual. Pulling his Glock from the bag between his feet and pointing it at her. What it would feel like, how loud it would be on the inside of the car. He kept himself utterly calm, it wouldn't be stressful. She shouldn't have been able to notice anything.
Ellis flinched and he'd caught her out. She looked away, at the floor of the car. Daniel smiled his twisted half smile and didn't have to say a word. She, of course, understood him perfectly. They were all keeping a few secrets.
If Bennet noticed the silence for the rest of the ride, he didn't mention anything. The three of them had fallen into a dynamic, though not a comfortable one. It is, however, impossible to sit quietly on a road trip. At least, when all you have is a locked down military issue smartphone. After a few miles, Ellis started chatting with Bennet, who would entertain himself and her gamely in a slight Texan drawl. Daniel sat in the back and listened mostly. The trouble with talking is that your mouth eventually catches up with your thoughts. At some point the two would begin to mix, which was never good. He'd been talking too much lately, he decided. Especially with confirmation of what Ellis could really do, he needed the buffer.
Eventually they arrived at their destination. A sprawling military base, not Hardrock or any of the ones Daniel had lived on. Those had been destinations, a hundred buildings, maybe less. This was a city. People ran in every direction in a mix of uniforms. The only branch unrepresented was the Coast Guard.
It made sense that they hadn't been briefed now. Whatever was happening here, they had more than enough firepower to handle it. And whatever happened here next, would be the talk of the entire armed services within a week.
Ellis frowned. "What's our cover Bennet? These people know enough to ask questions."
Bennet shrugged. "The CIA requested you."
The other 'Agency'. Daniel had long suspected that his Agency was subsidiary to the CIA. Its budget was one of the few places their funding could come from unnoticed. He had to show his ID at the gate, which clearly annoyed Ellis. She still didn't have the clearance he had.
They were waved through, out of the car, and into an air-conditioned meeting room. It was soundproof, Daniel noticed. Fully isolated. No windows or exterior doors. A man in a suit came in and addressed Bennet.
"You're from New York?" he asked. He had a reedy voice, high pitched and grating. It was the voice of someone used to deserving attention. He was tall, Irish American battling a retreating red hairline.
"I am," said Bennet.
"I'm Agent Newson, I requested your presence."
"We need your analysts." He glanced at Ellis and Daniel for the first time, and seemed to decide that they weren't worthy of his continued attention. Ellis interrupted him.
"That's us." She said, quickly. It wasn't clear, Daniel thought, if she'd meant to say that out loud. Either way the CIA man wasn't expecting it. He glanced at her, then back at Bennet, who nodded.
Newson decided to power through. "We need your analysts to assist in the investigation of an on-base incident."
"An on-base incident?" Bennet repeated slowly.
Newson shifted uncomfortably, and then sat down. "A murder."
"Why do you need us?" Daniel asked, surprising the agent for a second time. He clearly hadn't expected either of them to participate in this conversation. Which made Daniel wonder what The Agency told people about their Tracer's role in everything. Probably very little, given that most of them were children. That was why Daniel and Ellis had gotten the call. They were both technically adults. If The Agency had to send someone into a military base, where it knew everyone would be desperate to find out more about their operations, they couldn't send their child soldiers. Daniel almost grinned. He'd found another weakness.
Newson slid a sheaf of paper across the table to Bennet, who promptly (and to Newson's continued surprise) slid it to Daniel. "Sorry." Newson said, "I thought that— "
"I'm just operational support." Bennet said. "They do the magic."
Daniel opened it and spread the papers out so that Ellis could see them. She took half, he took the other. A police report. A soldier had gone missing while off duty, but on base. "What's the Mess in this context?" Daniel asked. That word could mean anything from 'fully stocked bar and restaurant' to 'cafeteria' to 'stack of MREs in a tent. On a base like this it was probably—.
"Here, Alcohol." Bennet said. He glanced at the agent, who shrugged.
"It's an officer's club. Lots of higher-ups rotate through here."
"So, he was drunk?" Ellis asked.
Bennet laughed, a short burst. "Almost surely."
Ellis slid a photo of the crime scene over to Daniel, and he understood why they'd been called in. Where there should have been a body, there was a pool of blood. Way too much blood.
"Did you find the body?" Ellis asked.
Newson cleared his throat. "We think that is the body."
"How many personal on this base were born in October of 2005 or later." Daniel asked.
Ellis and Bennet both looked at him sharply. He was born in October 2005, and he was the oldest known Tracer. Going by the numbers he'd gotten last week; the number of tracers had increased with each subsequent generation. Though, that could just mean The Agency was getting better at finding them.
Newsom looked at all their faces, then back at Daniel. "That clearly means something to you all."
Bennet coughed. "It means something classified" he said gently, but quickly.
Newsom looked confused. That probably didn't happen very much. "I thought you would be looking for something— not human."
Ellis was putting together the pieces too. She was already almost as good as him, Daniel thought. He didn't like that either. "The officer went missing in a CCTV blind spot, right?" she asked.
Newsom shifted in his chair. "That is correct." Which meant that it was almost certainly not an Occurrence or a Phenomenon. Creatures from other worlds didn't know what CCTV was.
Daniel leaned forward, pushing a sheet of paper back at the agent. "Does this all mean what I think it does?"
He was indicating to a long string of associated files. Internal investigations. Transfers between assignments.
The agent chewed on his lip. "He wasn't popular, if that's what you're asking."
"Then we need that list" Daniel said.