"Now the difficult one." Ellis said, "Why are you here?"
Liam feigned shock. "What a rude thing to ask."
"Answer the question." Daniel said.
"Do I still get one answer from you if I answer yours?"
<> Daniel expressed to Ellis. More images than words. He was getting good at this telepathic chat thing.
<
"Sure." She said out loud.
"There's something wrong with the building, I'm here to find the Tether and shut it down." Liam said.
"To save all the nice programmers and HR managers stuck upstairs?" Ellis asked.
"Sure!" Liam said, like the idea had just occurred to him. "I love it when my work helps people."
"What do you do with the sources after you take them?" Daniel asked.
Liam frowned, and then seemed to connect some dots. <
"What happened to the other kid, the one you were with in San Francisco?"
"She got re-assigned." Daniel said. He'd learned a few things then. Obviously, he'd been the one in San Francisco, but he'd also been watching them. He knew they'd faked the kill but hadn't said anything about it yet. Hopefully he'd assume Ellis already knew about it.
More importantly, Liam hadn't held onto that information. He wanted to keep them talking, he was just as curious about them.
"Do you always talk like this?" Liam asked.
Daniel blinked, confused. "How am I talking?"
"Exactly like that. What's the point of us exchanging answers if you answer in as few words as possible?"
Daniel felt Ellis' grin before he saw it. It just appeared. Click, and she was having the time of her life. "Sometimes he talks way too much," Ellis said, "But only when he's making a mistake."
<
"Then I'll ask you my other question." Liam said, "After which we can talk about the 'sources' or 'tethers'."
Ellis nodded. "Shoot."
"Why are you here?"
"To help the office workers and stop the phenomenon that is occurring."
"Will you tell your boss that I was here?" He looked back at Daniel, who'd already kept his secret once.
"No." Daniel said. He felt the pressure in his head increase as Ellis tried to determine if that was true or not. She wouldn't find an answer, he didn't really know.
"By destroying the tethers, I reduce the amount of magic in the world."
"Does that effect the monsters?" Daniel asked.
"They're stronger if their Tether is intact. They're even stronger if they're near other creature's tethers."
Ellis sat down on the stairs, leaning into the conversation. "How'd you figure that out?
Liam shook his head. "My turn. What are you going to do with me now?"
Daniel shrugged, he knew Ellis would panic and take control. He hadn't left her any choice but to let Liam slip away. Which was his preferred solution. He liked the idea of one fewer tracer in The Agency's grasp.
"We'll let you go, as soon as we figure out what's happening here."
Daniel flicked the safety on Liam's gun and slid it into his waistband. No reason to take any risks. Plus, an untraceable handgun could come in handy. Liam watched the motion carefully but didn't say anything.
"Why don't you go change." Daniel said. "We went through a clothing store on the way in."
"We'll go talk to the workers upstairs" Ellis said. "If you want to help, you can catch back up. If you want to slip away, we never saw you."
Ellis tried to say something as soon as Liam left the room. Daniel held up a finger and waited until the rogue tracer's footsteps had reached the cobblestone street outside.
"You saw him in San Francisco?" she said, as soon as he lowered his finger. "Is that what you were hiding the whole time? That's what you got that kid shipped off to Nevada for?"
Daniel raised an eyebrow; he hadn't known that Jefferson was in Nevada. He also didn't intend to come clean about anything more than he had to.
"I didn't ever see him, but yes."
"The Agency would put us in a cell or something, if they knew."
Daniel felt his lip curling up into a half smile. "Then it looks like we have to trust each other."
Ellis nervously stood up and took a step back. "What will you do if you don't trust me?"
Daniel shrugged. "I trust you." She was silent, so Daniel started up the stairs walking past her. She stayed on the first step, watching him all the way up to the first landing. "Truth or lie, Ellis?" he asked. He had felt the pressure in his brain again, in its own way telling him exactly what she was feeling.
"True." she said. He let the smile twist across his face.
"Then let's go talk to some 'embedded insuratech providers.'" He said, quoting the sign in the lobby.
They heard voices on the fourth floor, even from the staircase. The sound of adults arguing. Daniel realized too late that they had a new problem. Usually, they had a few black masked soldiers alongside them, which tended to get people in a co-operative mood. Without them, Ellis and Daniel were just a pair of weirdly ripped teenagers. One of whom had a gun.
Daniel pulled his shirt out from the waistband and opened it, wearing it like a jacket over his undershirt. Loose, it covered the gun holster on his waist, and the one wedged into the small of his back.
"Are you trying a new look?" Ellis asked.
"We're tourists," Daniel said, "because we can't answer any questions about the area."
He watched with some satisfaction as Ellis got it. She took off her tie and stuffed it in her pocket, then she looked at him cautiously.
"What?" he asked.
She gestured at the whole of him, then the whole of her. "Well, they won't believe we're siblings."
"You can be adopted." Daniel said.
Ellis grabbed his hand and pulled him into the office. "Hello?" she called, at least an octave higher than usual. "Is anyone else in here?"
A chorus of voices came back. "I didn't think there was anyone else inside!" someone said. The office workers were scattered between a few rooms, amidst white boards, cubicals, and a kitchenette. "It's some kids!" a woman said. Almost all of them were in their 20s. Some of them were barely older than Ellis and Daniel.
Ellis sighed dramatically, laying it on thick. "Oh my god, I thought we were the only ones in here."
"We couldn't leave." Daniel said, "and there was no one else in the whole building."
"We've been here for the last few hours." One of the men said. He was the oldest, slightly out of shape in a hideous polo shirt and slacks. "Where did you come from?"
"We've been here too." Ellis said. "We must have missed you somehow."
"Are you students?" the woman asked. She was the other obvious leader, in her late 30's by Daniel's guess. She had the kind of blonde hair you only get from a hair salon.
"No," Ellis was saying. "Or not here. We're on vacation. I'm Ellis, this is Daniel."
Daniel felt he should say something.
"Hi."
<
<
<
She was messing with him, and still holding his hand. He wriggled his fingers to remind her, but she held on. "We're dating." Ellis added confidently.
Daniel felt the pressure return to his mind, right as he reacted. This was, he realized, a spectator sport. He didn't mind the cover story, did he? It explained why two collage age teenagers who looked nothing alike were traveling together. For some reason he still felt his heartrate increasing. Hadn't she just been scared of him, moments ago on the stairs? Earlier today, Ellis hadn't been willing to talk to him. Every time Daniel thought he had her figured out, she did something like this.
It probably had nothing to do with any of that. She wasn't trying to mess with him, it was just a cover story. Probably. He could hear her heart going a little faster than normal, but it was impossible to tell why.
"When did you first notice something was wrong?" Ellis asked.
"When we came in this morning." The man said. "We got trapped on our way in."
The woman spoke up as soon as he finished, almost running over the end of his sentence. "We've been trying to get out of the building ever since. It seems like there's a weakness here." She pointed past the other workers, five or six of them. They were standing quietly and watching. She was pointing at the offices' glass windows, the ones that overlooked the street. Sure enough, Daniel could see the night outside, not the false sunshine he'd seen everywhere else. A few cops stood in their cars.
"Wait," Ellis said. "When you say you got trapped, on your way in, how did you notice that?"
The man in the polo shirt laughed easily, too easily. "All the plants of course, they trapped us in that Italian restaurant."
<
Daniel was noticing it too. All the other office workers were standing exactly still. Breathing the bare minimum amount.
"Of course, it was actually me that got trapped in there." The older woman said. "But I yelled so much that Franklin" she pointed at the other speaker, "came to see what was wrong."
Daniel pulled on Ellis' hand, tugging her back behind him. Something was very wrong.
"That sounds scary." he said. "How'd you get her out?"
All the office workers laughed at the same time. "Oh." They said, like it was the punchline of a joke. Too late, Daniel realized that one of the workers, the one from the kitchenette, was trying to slip behind them. "We didn't get her out!"
<
Daniel drew his gun and pushed her back towards the fire stairs.