Triptych

After - Part III

"AGENT PIERSON, report!" came the staticky hiss over the headset. Basil had to resist the urge to tap his own earpiece and demand a response of his own from Gwen.

Being the smart bloke left behind in the surveillance van sucked. It reeked of B.O. and gun oil and overheating electrical doodads.

The air conditioning had quit before they'd even gotten past bloody Whitechapel, and being cooped up in a small space filled with whirring computers and twenty geeks and grunts had been no picnic. Basil had envied Gwen and Shelley and the rest of the Agents over in the military transport wagon, luxuriating in the cool breeze of a functioning fan.

Basil sat back in his chair in the far corner of the van. There were five different screens arranged in an alcove of computer banks around him, each with their own interface keys and ports. One was a radar that tracked all of their GPS tagged ops and military combatants, one was a sort of Google-Earth-on-steroids meant to work in tandem with the first, and one was for Basil's necessary split second calculations and computations just in case he detected some Flasher activity while en route. One was devoted to the computer chatter between the different units of the operation, and the last was an early warning system for the initiation of a Flash, should one of the targets choose to try to escape in that manner. So far, that station had been silent. On the console beside that screen, the cellular phone that had been altered into a Mobile Flasher Tracker lay waiting, a funny little dog spinning in circles on the screen saver, ready to jump into action to point its user to the centre of the temporal phenomenon.

Basil clenched his fists on his knees and stopped breathing, waiting for Gwen's response. After long minutes, she replied with an urgent, "I have an unlocked door. Going in..."

Basil sighed in relief.

"No," came the order from Colonel Wright, the mission leader from the military side. "Wait for the army. I'm sending them around to your position now."

Wright was two computer banks down from Basil, standing with purpose in the very middle of the surveillance van, frowning with a practiced air of paternal gravity at the screens, beret at a jaunty angle. Basil thought that all he lacked was a pipe, and had passed several long minutes imagining what type the colonel might prefer.

"But sir, I can hear them retreating," Gwen protested, and Basil felt his gut clench. Gwen was going to ignore the order, Gwen was going to barrel in and get shot and Basil was going to have to go to another funeral, another fucking double funeral with chillingly quiet caskets perched side by side. He was going to be left alone, the last one, just like Kalp had been after Maru and Trus. Basil would shrivel up if Gwen — 

"No. That's an order."

On the other side of the radio, Gwen sighed. "Yes sir," she said, and went quiet.

Basil knew that tone, that little huff. Gwen had settled down for a good pout and Basil had never been so fucking grateful for her moodiness before in his goddamn life.

After a few tense seconds, a soldier reported that they had taken up position with Agent Pierson and would send her back to the van on Wright's order. Basil let out a long hiss of breath between his teeth, his lungs aching with relief — that was it, then. The army was going to take care of the arresting-and-shooting part and Gwen could stop skulking about and come back to where it was safe.

Colonel Wright surveyed the lay of his soldiers according to their GPS trackers. He waited half a second, frowned at a few shifting dots, scanned the heat cameras pointed at the buildings and snapped. "No time to wait for Pierson, it has to be now." He lifted his hand to his earpiece and said, simply and without any special inflection, "Okay, boys and girls. Give 'er."