Everyone stood from the table and out the doors lining the room, and you indicated to Cache to follow. You couldn't imagine bringing anyone else; there was nobody else you trusted the same way. He nodded, and the two of you stepped into your own private section of the white void, the door disappearing behind you as it shut.
You pulled out your phone, and a familiar voice greeted you.
"Operator."
"Chrysie?" you asked.
"Vector is helping. The Oasis operators will be managing the assault, there's more of them and they're used to working together."
"Glad to see you up and about, so to speak," you said warmly. To be honest, you'd been anxious about going into the Matrix with anyone else watching over you.
"Aww, thanks. Right, so, uniforms and identification. Your call on the details," she said. You picked up the implication, and asked for a mirror, inspecting yourself.
"... I hate to say it, but I think I might need to be a guy cop," you concluded eventually. Cache winced, but nodded in agreement. It was still early days; the lack of stubble was an improvement, but you still read
male.
"Officer Boymode it is," she said, and in front of you was a pair of tables with all the gear you'd need laid out, with an ID tag and police badge laid over it. You picked yours up and stared at the dead-eyed photograph of your alternate self, labelled
Thomas Baker, Lieutenant in San Francisco's Administration Bureau. Cache's named him Michael Wright, Inspector in the same. Atop both were earpieces and a throat mic, as well as a pair of aviator sunglasses.
"This is a lot of gear," he muttered, picking up the heavy belt curiously as you put the communication gear in place.
"The department is on high alert, given, you know, the everything," Chrysie explained. "Try to keep the sunglasses on anywhere where it won't be suspicious; Agents need to see your eyes to tell if you're a redpill. As far as everyone in the station knows, you are there to reset the password for Captain Robert Allen Chambers, who does not understand information security and can't stop clicking links in mysterious emails."
"That was my work, by the way," Vector added smugly.
The two of you dressed in the dark blue uniforms and bulletproof vests, Cache jokingly complaining the whole way about how unsuited the colour and cut was for both of you to ease the tension. It really did look awful; you looked in the mirror and almost recoiled.
"At least there's not a tie…" you muttered, fixing the belt in place and making a point to draw and reholster a few times, just to get a feel for it. "This sucks. The SWAT outfit had a bit of menace to it, but this is just..." Like staring at a nightmare version of yourself, one that Cache could never have trusted.
"It's about to get worse," Cache said. "Our ride's here."
---
It was late morning in San Francisco, and from the moment you got rolling it was plain that things were different. You spotted several police helicopters in your short ride to the station, and several corners where the SFPD had established roadblocks. You also spotted several dark green National Guard humvees as you moved deeper into the city; Vector said they were clustered around city hall, the highway, and airports.
"Why would they concentrate there?"
"Because whatever human is in charge of them doesn't know we can pop out of telephone lines and is trying to cut off our escape," Vector continued. "Agents probably figure it doesn't matter enough to potentially give the game away."
"What are we looking at in terms of agents?" Cache asked, scanning the streets as he drove. You had one hand on your holster the whole way.
"There's one in police HQ right now, and they've been moving around between stations on some kind of patrol. Hence the diversion. Next right."
The station was an old single-story brick building with a narrow garage door, and would have looked quaint without the SWAT guys clustered out front watching the street. One of them halted you as you approached and beckoned to roll down the driver-side window, leaning against the car as Cache fished out his ID. His submachine gun clattered off the window frame.
"Am I under arrest, officer?" Cache asked, injecting as much sarcasm into his voice as he could. The man laughed.
"I know, it's a pain. The Major is being a real hardass about the sunglasses, by the way, ditch 'em before you head inside."
"Thanks buddy," Cache said warmly, rolling up the windows and sighing with relief as you drove past. You threw your glasses into the cup holder alongside his, already wary.
"Well, shit," you said quietly. That sounded like a rule handed down by the agents, already robbing you of an advantage. Cache just shrugged as he parked in the free space closest to the door.
"It is what it is. Let's get this done."
You showed your IDs to the woman behind the desk, who took a painfully long time confirming things on her computer, then shuffled in. You'd seen a map of the building during the briefing, but it hadn't quite captured how strangely oppressive the atmosphere was, with the low ceilings and ancient wood panels, the familiar cubicles and desks and busy coffee machine. It was all just the same shit, even for the enforcers.
You headed for Captain Chamber's office, tucked away in the back about five doors down the hall from the tech room you needed to access. It was so close, but there were too many eyes on you right now, so you headed into the office. Chambers was a balding, middle-aged man with a bushy moustache and the shamed demeanour of a schoolboy who had gotten in trouble; he rolled away from his desk as you entered, and stood in the corner as you sat and turned on his computer.
"The damn thing just… stopped working," he lied, rather transparently, shrugging. "Won't let me in."
"Hey, don't worry about it, sir, it happens," Cache reassured him. "Computers just kinda do stuff sometimes. Tom, you want a coffe?"
It took you a moment to remember that Tom was
you.
"Yeah, I've been dying for one." You turned apologetically to the Captain. "Chief's been having us run all over, sir."
"Oh, hold on boys, I'll go get you some. How do you take it?"
He disappeared down the hall just as you got logged in with the code Vector supplied, connected to the internet, and almost the instant you did you were bombarded by a series of truly rancid banner pop-ups. Within a minute of windows overlapping one another, you had a far greater understanding of Chamber's sexual fantasies than you could have imagined. The computer whined under the strain of dozens of pixelated naked bodies making their sudden appearance, advertising fetish sites largely focused around black and asian women using some truly revolting language.
"Jesus…" you muttered. Knowing better than to click ads with fake close buttons, you began force-closing processes in a vain attempt to stop the flood.
"Uh, to be clear, that wasn't us," Vector hastily added. "Though now we know what kind of person clicks random email links."
"Yeah, okay," you said, a little stunned.
"Good thing we don't actually have to fix this, right?" Unable to stop yourself, you popped open the registry and began deleting. "Right?"
Chambers came back in with a coffee in both hands, setting it down and babbling something about how honestly, his computer worked just fine before yesterday.
"Hey, I believe you," Cache assured him, as you desperately tried to finish what you were doing in between the periodic assault of depravity. You didn't really have anything against porn, god knows you'd been an early visitor of Danni's Hard Drive in college (the guys on your floor of the dorm had a shared account; the RA would make you pay that month's subscription if you left the kitchen fucked up), but the layers of implications hit you in waves, much like the pop-ups did.
"Moving into position," Chrysie whispered.
Cache nodded to you subtly, then moved over to the Captain, speaking warmly about basic web safety and not trusting weird anonymous emails, all while assuring him that, obviously, he was not to blame in any way. You worked quietly, grateful to have a task complex enough that it was actually plausible you'd still be here when things went down.
"... don't look up, but just got a signal. Agent in the building. Look away from the windows. Do not make eye contact."
Shit.
You looked down at your hands as you typed, and you saw Cache consider the blinds over the windows looking out into the hall before reconsidering it and simply turning his back, gesturing with his hands to get the Captain to follow him. If the blinds were closed, the agent might open the door and check; this was a risk that avoided a bigger one. Just act casual, right?
"He's moving your way. Stay cool." You focused intently on the screen. There was a squawk from the radio on the bookshelf, and the Captain picked it up and muttered something, then opened the door and leaned out. "He's in the hallway." The Captain ducked his head back in, grinning.
Footsteps echoed, then past.
"He's checking the tech room. Okay, he's turning back. Heading for rear offices." The updates came slowly, and you felt like you only remembered to breathe when Chysilsik was speaking. "Stay cool. I think he's talking to the station chief."
More footsteps, faster, echoed through the hall, and another cop entered the office, breathless and grinning. A little younger than Chambers, the man was absolutely enormous, a slab of tough muscle that seemed in some ways
unworked, like he'd been crudely cast from a well-worn mould of a heroic build.
"You see him?" he asked.
"Just for a moment, that's definitely one of them. No doubt. Have you seen them at HQ?" Captain Chamber asked you suddenly, sounding a lot more animated.
"Huh?" Cache said, and the newcomer pulled him aside to whisper, though not quietly.
"The
Agent, man! They've been everywhere since, well…"
"Since Tuesday," Chambers supplied solemnly.
You heard muttered voices in your ear as Cache found his footing again.
"Oh yeah, they're looking over our shoulder all the time," he said. "Pain in the ass."
"What?" The Captain's befuddlement seemed absolute. "It's awesome!"
"Yeah?" you asked, unable to control yourself. Unsure where you were going, you channelled as much dumb cop movie brain as you could. "Seems a lot like they're muscling in on our jurisdiction. Sir."
"Oh, hell," The Captain swung the door closed and beamed. "I can't believe you made Lieutenant and you don't know about Agents. They're like… special."
"Like, special agents?" Cache asked. "FBI?"
"Well, yeah, but…" the newcomer began. "More than that. They're
Agents."
"… what the shit," Chrysie said in your ear, quite loudly. "They
know?"
"I don't get it, what do you mean?" you said. The newcomer indicated to the captain, closing the door behind him.
"Okay, not a word of this gets to civilian ears, okay? This is serious shit," Chambers warned. You both assured him, and he leaned against the bookshelf, staring at you.
"So, back when I was a beat cop, this was… ah, 81, maybe 82, we got called out to chase this punk kid down, some drug dealer or something. Put two cops in hospital, and he was the slipperiest bastard I'd ever seen. He got himself into this hotel, climbed right up a brick wall to do it, but we got him cornered, and a guy in a black suit shows up and leads us in. I'll never forget it. We traded shots, my buddy got hit and the guy got out into the hall and jumped the fire escape, got across the street somehow. And I'll never forget it… this man in black, the Agent, he just
jumped. Standing start, cleared the street in one go, grabbed the kid's collar and took him down, right there on the roof."
"... bullshit," you responded numbly.
"Nah, it's real! Never seen anything like it. Beat him so bad he died on the way to the hospital." The man laughed. "Of course, there was traffic, you know."
"Yeah, of course," Cache mummured.
"The agent goes downstairs, and we go to meet him at the elevator, and out comes one of the beat cops, Fat Larry, we called him that because, you know. He kinda fell behind during the chase. He said it was like something took him over, something big and
righteous; he didn't really remember it all, but he said he felt like Superman. That's an Agent, right there."
"… you saw this?" you asked, and he laughed.
"Like twenty cops did! Fat Larry said he knew we couldn't tell anyone, we wrote up the bastard fell off the roof, but we all knew what we saw. It's happened a couple of times since, but… I guess they don't tell you guys in Admin."
"I think I heard about that," Cache said, trying to win back some control of the conversation. "Guys switching places and stuff?"
The new cop nodded seriously.
"You know the worst thing?" Chambers added. "I never got picked. It's always to somebody else. I dunno. Maybe one of you will get a chance, you know? Get picked."
"So… what are they then? Aliens?" you asked, trying to inject enough sarcasm in your voice to sound doubtful. Chambers shook his head.
"No. It's something else." He paused, contemplating his next words carefully. "I dunno what. But bigger."
"… Heads up, Agent is moving your way again. Straight toward you." Vector said, stress in his voice.
"You know, some of the stuff a guy on PCP can do, doesn't seem real sometimes." the other cop added, talking slower, more measured. His deep, sonorous voice gave it special gravity. "You hear stories, from other departments, people running up walls, fighting whole patrols, insane shit, right?"
"Yeah, all the time," you replied. Vector said the Agent was in the hall, almost on top of you.
"… Bob thinks I'm crazy, but I think there's something big at work. Big and secret," the cop continued. He took a deep breath before pressing on. "There's a war on, not in Kosovo or whatever, a real one. Right here at home. Forces, moving to undermine everything. Everywhere."
"Aww jeez, here we go…" Chambers added, though he clearly loved hearing it. Over it, Chrysie was yelling to get the distraction moving,
now. The Agent was right outside the door.
"It's not drugs, or, not just drugs. These guys, the punks, the goths, the trenchcoat mafia fucks like the ones that killed our buddies this week, they can do things no human is supposed to. I've seen it."
"Boys, you meet a guy like that, you get backup, understand?" Chambers added seriously. He made you both swear to.
"I think maybe they're not human, not anymore." the newcomer continued. "I didn't believe in demons, but I've seen things. I do now."
"Alice, five seconds…" Chrysie warned. The man leaned close, looking over the desk.
"But we're not alone in this fight. There's angels on our side, and we can call on them."
There was a firm knock on the door.
"Now!"
Captain Chambers opened the door, and the woman you'd seen at the front desk was there, eyes unfocused, staring into nothing.
"Officer?" Chambers asked. She blinked, then smiled.
"Oh! The IT boys are here to see you," she said, slurring her words slightly. "Isn't that nice."
Then every phone in the station began to ring.
You heard voices and shouting in the halls. The radio on the bookshelf squawked and blared static. Sirens blared outside.
"Shit! The power plant," Chambers said, phone to his ear. "Okay, we're in full lockdown, right now. Chris, find out what SWAT is doing, then get two guards on the server room. You two, forget that. Go reinforce the guys at the back entrance."
You shared a glance with Cache.
"That wasn't a fucking suggestion, Lieutenant!"
—-
Roll your charge, then make a plan.
As Cache is with you and believes in you, roll one more die. Discard to 5 as usual.
