Conundrum

Part 25

theSingingDragon

"Danh."

On hearing Vincent call his name, Danh steeled his expression and turned around to see his blurry partner approaching. Walking briskly up to close the distance, he nodded for Vincent to follow him to their office.

"Mr. Eldridge decided on who to test the handcuffs on," he said when the office door was shut, holding up a folder for Vincent to read the name. Now that they were standing closer Danh could read his expression better.

"Tell the director no."

"I gave him a detailed explanation for why I didn't think it would work well."

Vincent's stare became physically palpable. "But you didn't tell him no?"

"He doesn't exactly like us."
"We have the best success rate."

"We have expensive salaries."

The door opened and both of them turned to face it.

"Mr. Agent, is there a - oh, you're here too."

Danh knew that voice - it was the college student that had stopped him asking about one of the cases, the one they had hired to fix the detection and inhibiting technology, Jamie Michaelson. Now the blurry face looked familiar.

"Ah, yes, Mr. Michaelson." Danh held out his hand, stepping in between Jamie and Vincent as he heard the sound of Vincent tucking the folder into his jacket. "I'm Agent Danh. Pleasure to meet you properly this time."

There was a slight pause before Michaelson took his hand, and the shake was even more hesitant. "Any word on Spencer Ronan, the non-magical person you have locked up?"

Danh could feel Vincent staring at his back. "To be honest, Agent Vincent is probably more familiar with how her case is proceeding."

The stare grew less intense.

"She's doing well," Vincent said.

There was a long pause. "In prison?"

"... Considering her baseline for well."

"How are you progressing with the inhibiting technology?" Danh interrupted, putting on what was arguably not quite his best smile.

"Oh. Right." The blurry college student shifted. "I think I've found a way to stabilize it. Sort of. It kind of has to do with detecting if someone is actually magically - again, sort of."

"You're going to need to be more specific." Vincent interrupted.

"So imagine someone tries to pick the lock by creating a pick out of ice."

Danh turned to Vincent, who in turn shrugged. "I gave him a couple of theoreticals." Vincent turned back to Michaelson. "You were saying."

"The current system is trying to detect if the temperature drops below 43 degrees, which is kind of arbitrary if you ask me, but the problem is that the sensors take longer to register that the temperature is below 43 degrees than it does to pick the lock with ice. You could, theoretically, improve the speed and accuracy of the sensors, but that's kind of useless too."

Danh could hear Vincent shift his weight impatiently.

"Whatever you do, you're going to have some sort of delay that can be exploited," continued Michaelson. "Plus! You're only checking for a very specific range of abilities – well, outcomes of abilities, not the abilities themselves – which means someone who could, say, teleport, would be totally unaffected."