The outer office was so austere and clean that Kit stopped cold when she got a look through the door. Windows took up fully half the room, blinds closed on all of them. Shelves and filing cabinets covered the walls except for a space occupied by a large squashy couch.
The desk was piled high with papers. Behind it sat a man feverishly pounding away at a keyboard. Kit let the door swing closed behind her as she waited for him to finish.
It was hard to tell how tall he was, but he was definitely a big man. Broad in the shoulders and thick, the beginnings of a gut showing beneath a cheap suit. His face was round but not fat, simply the moon-face of the farm boy that his build suggested. He wore glasses, the computer's reflection in the lenses hiding the color of his eyes. His hair was blond, a shade thin in the front, but that could have been the way it was combed, the part ruler-straight.
He looked like an accountant.
Then he clicked something on the screen, turned off the monitor, and spun his chair to face her.
Then
he looked like a cop.
“
Special Agent Kitra Singh, sir.” She put out a hand, which he grasped. Firm shake, but not hard. Not trying to impress. Completely human strength.
“
Rowan Archer. I'm the director here.” He waved to a chair nearly hidden under several boxes of files. “Have a seat, and quit with the 'sir' bullshit. Call me Archer. Everyone else does.”
Kit nodded and quickly moved the boxes, then sat.
Archer's eyes were vivid green, she saw. Hard not to notice, given how intensely they studied her. His face was a cop face, then, impassive and observant. Unreadable.
She waited. He watched her wait.
After what felt like hours but was probably less than a minute, Archer put his elbows on his desk and laced his fingers together.
“
You're a quiet one, aren't you?” he asked.
Kit shook her head. “Sorry. Not usually, but I'm still in shock. I was...somewhere else yesterday. And if you'd asked me then, I'd have told you I would be there for years.”
Archer nodded as if that made perfect sense. “I know. I'm not happy about this sudden transfer, either. Do you know the details?”
“
No, si—Archer. I don't even know what this place is. My briefing was short, and I wasn't told much. Only that our director needed me here as fast as possible. An 'indefinite loan,' he called it.”
Archer's eyes twitched, his only sign of surprise. “That old bastard Robinson sent you here and didn't even tell you why. Jesus in heaven, that man's a piece of work.”
Kit tensed. The blasphemy she couldn't care less about, but Robinson had taken her in. Trained her. Kept her from the hate directed at the Next. She kept quiet, but her guard went up.
Archer seemed oblivious.
“Well,” he began. “The basics. This is the Kentucky branch of the Office of Superhuman Affairs. I'm the director. In theory, we deal with anything and everything that has to do with the Next. In reality, we contain and control those who abuse their powers. The facility—and for various reasons having to do with national security, it's just called 'the facility'—is much more than just a prison. It's complicated, but you'll get in the rhythm quick enough.”
He smiled, but it was a cold expression that came nowhere near his eyes. Those remained flat and calculating. “At least, you'll get up to speed if I let you stay. The reason you're here is because the person who was supposed to be in your place, Luis Delgado, has been seriously injured. Delgado was third in command at the Tennessee office. He was getting a promotion to come here.”
It took no time to process that information. “Wait,” Kit said. “Are you telling me I'm supposed to be second in command here? I just found out this place existed a few minutes ago!”
Archer laughed, a dry sound devoid of humor. “No, Agent Singh. You aren't second in command. Here's the way the OSA does things. Field agents always work in pairs, no matter their rank. Every person from the lowliest trainee to the director himself—that's me—has an equal. The idea is that each human is paired with one of the Next. They're always equal. Which means you'll be running this place beside me. If, and only if, I give my approval.”
Kit was stunned. In her Helix unit she'd been a special agent. Not the top of the heap by any means, but she had led teams and commanded missions. What this man was saying went far beyond her experience.
Archer's expression softened. “I know this is a lot to take in. I'm not thrilled, like I said, but I've been without a co-director for too long. The brass are starting to get antsy about it. So for now, you're it. Robinson isn't stupid. He knows talent and brains when he sees them. The only real question for me is whether you have the temperament for the job.”
Kit tilted her head in curiosity. “Haven't you read my file? There's a lot of information there.”
Archer shook his head. “No, I haven't. We've had some security problems with electronics, which is why I asked Robinson to send a physical copy with you.”
“Tucker mentioned something about that. I thought it was weird, Robinson making me carry it with me.” Kit fished the file out of one of the bags between her feet. Archer eyed them curiously but said nothing as he took the thick manila folder.
Another small, surprised twitch of the eyes as he noticed the cover emblem on the file. He looked up at her before he opened it, naked astonishment on his face. “You're a part of Helix?” he asked.
“Well, yes, of course. Where did you think Robinson would've pulled me from?”
She stared at the stylized strand of golden DNA enclosed within a black circle. Her uniform—which she had given up back at the base—carried a patch on the shoulder and breast with the same logo embroidered on it. It had been a part of her life for three years, a symbol of what she had achieved through dedication.
Gone, now. For god only knew how long.
“
Jesus, I thought he'd be sending me a Next working for the FBI, maybe an army specialist. You're a goddamn spook. A
super-
spook, at that.”
Kit bristled. “I'm a high-ranking member of the most elite unit of anti-terrorism operatives in the world. My specialties include covert infiltration, target neutralization, and long-range observation and assessment. I'd appreciate it if you didn't call me a
spook
.”
Archer grinned. “No offense intended, darlin'.” That garnered a frosty glare from Kit. “So. Impress me. Wow me with your observational skills. What do you know about me?”
Kit was growing frustrated, but she refused to let him nettle her. Instead she fell into the familiar state of mind that her instructors had drilled into her over many months of training. It was like riding a mental gyroscope, an evenness that couldn't be touched by any amount of emotional upheaval. It allowed her to instantly piece together disparate bits of information into a snap assessment. The advantage was that her judgment wasn't colored by her emotions. The disadvantage was that it came with absolute honesty.
“
You're personally invested in your job,” she said. “You sleep here often but not always—you only have one change of clothes hanging on the back of that shelf, and your sofa is new but already worn down from the way you sleep on it. The same way, most nights. You're detail-oriented and obsessive. You use your own system for tracking your work, based on the organized chaos in this room, and if you don't actually enjoy being in charge, you at least like seeing the job done right.”
Archer smiled. A real smile, if only a small one.
“You don't like my kind. Whatever it is that drives you to work your life away, it centers on the Next. Like I said, personal. It's a vulnerability I wouldn't have expected in someone with your level of power.”
Archer's smile actually widened at that. His hands came apart, raising in a 'what can I do?' sort of gesture.
“You're mostly right, Agent Singh. But it's the thin difference between what you see and what is real that matters.”
He stood and walked around the desk, and Kit noticed with detached indifference that he was tall. Very tall, maybe six-four or five. Archer walked to the door and held it open for her, ever the southern gentleman.
“Come on. I'll give you the guided tour and explain why you're right and wrong about me at the same time.”
Kit stepped into the elevator with Archer, the doors behind her snapping closed. He leaned a little toward her.
“It'll be about three minutes until it moves, just so you know. Before the locks will disengage, the security system does a full sweep of the facility to make sure there aren't any breaches.”
Kit nodded.
“Since I didn't get much of a look at your file, tell me about your ratings.”
The question came up so often during mission planning with Helix that the answer rolled off her lips without thought. “My mental rating is zero-plus. My energy rating is zero-neutral. My physical rating is total-plus.”
Archer gave a low whistle. “Wow. Never met a total-plus physical before. What's the reason for the mental rating?”
Kit shrugged as the elevator made several loud clicking noises. “I don't have any energy powers at all, and no real mental powers to speak of except for a strong resistance to mental intrusion and control.”
Archer bobbed his head in understanding. “What's the breakdown of your physical aspects? If you're going to work the field, I need to know.”
She rattled them off. “Running speed rated at fifty-plus miles an hour. Coordinated reflexes rated at four times human norm. Speed aggregate is a six out of ten on the Hooper scale.”
She glanced at Archer, who seemed suitably impressed.
“
My strength is rated at an aggregate five, with a record press of seven hundred and forty-five pounds. Though I pulled a muscle on that one,” she added in a murmur.
“
My resilience rating is also a five, though experience leads me to believe that number is too high. The Hooper metrics don't consider a lot of real-world scenarios.”
Archer grunted. “Such as?”
Kit grimaced and absently rubbed a hand across her upper abdomen. “Such as a wanna-be jihadist using a knife instead of a gun. Bastard shot me in the tit with a nine-millimeter and didn't bat an eye when the bullet flattened. He comes up on me and pulls a knife, jams it right into my gut. Lucky he missed most of the important stuff.”
Archer leaned against the wall of the elevator, arms crossed. They were moving, but slowly. The OSA facility above was large, the one below gigantic. It took a while to traverse the barrier layers between the two.
“I've seen that more than once, myself,” Archer said. “Scientists measure and record, but at the end of the day too many of them have spent their lives fantasizing about comic books and bulletproof heroes. Which is pretty ironic, since they're the ones who should be thinking about force relative to surface area, you know?”
Kit snorted. “Funny part was, this kid wasn't much bigger than me. He just had a mean thrust with his blade. The bullet broke apart on me, but the point of that knife was
small
. Once he made the tiniest puncture, the rest was just physics. That's why Helix outfits all of us with stab vests now.”
“
God,” Archer said. “That must have been rough. Especially since you probably felt invulnerable until then.”
Lost in the memory, Kit nodded. The shock of it, the anger. The feeling of violation, as if the boy had taken something away from her.
“Yeah, it was. Took a while to get over it.”
Archer cocked his head, eyebrow raised. “So what did you do to the kid who stabbed you?”
Kit laughed. “I
wanted
to choke him,” she said. “But I was instructed to bring his cell in unharmed if possible.” She rubbed her arms and shivered, though it had nothing to do with the temperature inside the metal box. “It was the first time I ever wanted to kill someone. I'm glad I didn't, even with what he did to me and what he was planning to do to all those other people.”
Archer clapped her on the shoulder. “That's a good answer.”
The elevator clicked several more times, followed by a small ding. There wasn't a floor display anywhere, but the big man put a hand on her back as the door opened, nudging her forward.
“
Here we go, Agent Singh. Now you get to see what we really do here.”
The elevator doors opened onto more doors. Not wildly different from the smooth, brushed steel that receded into the walls, the interior set were bulkier, thicker. Their color was slightly off from the pure silver of the elevator doors.
Kit reached a hand out to touch them, but Archer snatched her wrist with surprising speed. She stopped short of snapping at him when she saw the look on his face. Pain and concern mixed with effort as held her wrist still. Sometimes it was easy to forget that human beings were fragile enough by comparison that she could hurt them without even trying.
“
Sorry,” Archer said. “Don't want to get personal, but you really don't want to do that. Electrified.”
His hand fell away. Kit let hers do the same.
A voice crooned overhead. “Voice print confirmed.”
Despite herself, Kit was impressed. For all the importance Helix held in tackling threats normal operatives couldn't, the program itself was relatively low-tech and bare on resources. It must have showed, because Archer grinned and winked at her as he ambled through the massive doors, which opened with barely a whisper.
Through the heavy inner doors, a long hallway lined in the same metal stretched ahead for two dozen yards. There were small circular cutouts spaced every ten inches in the walls, a perfect grid bracketing them as they walked. The floor was concrete covered by a heavy iron grate, and Kit saw thick wiring between the two.
Eventually they came to a door. Kit expected something out of a science-fiction movie, but what she got was the same heavy swinging door you could find in any large building. Cheap. Standard. Durable.
Disappointing, considering the buildup from the long customized entrance.
Archer pushed the handle inward and held the door for her. Kit grimaced at him. “You know that gesture comes from a time when women were considered so weak they
couldn't
hold a door open, right? And you know I could probably take that one off its hinges?”
He smiled but didn't budge. “You know I'm a southerner, don't you? We hold doors for ladies. It's a thing.”
“Well, Mr. Archer, if I didn't know any better I'd say you were trying to make me feel more comfortable around you. Is that because I'm a woman or because I'm one of
them
?”
His smile slipped. Just a little, but it was there. “You don't know what you're talking about, Singh. You've got no idea.” He gestured for her to move forward. “Come on. If you're gonna work here, you need to see this.”
She walked through the door and into a scene she couldn't understand at first.
Before her was a massive room. It was a dome, naked metal arching overhead in a complex lattice supporting concrete covered in iron mesh. Three men stood ten feet away, each training heavy assault rifles at chest level. All three wore black fatigues with heavily armored vests, standard combat tactical gear, but topped by helmets that looked more like something you'd find in a motorcycle shop than on a soldier.
She noted, as her eyes moved past them and across the room, that all of their gear looked used, as if they had seen combat recently enough that scuffs and frayed edges couldn't be seen to.
Behind those three men, covering three quarters of the floor space, were more soldiers. All were arrayed in defensive patterns—some behind barricades, others perched on risers, and a few in what could only be a small first-aid area. There were at least a hundred of them, all armed to the teeth and obviously tense.
Archer waved at the three men before him. “Good morning, gentlemen. I've got a guest. We're heading to sub-seven.”
The soldier in the center nodded. “You're running late today, sir,” the man said, his voice tinny as it flowed through a small speaker in the side of his helmet.
“Yeah, I know,” Archer replied. He hiked a thumb at Kit, who stood in mute shock. “New lady. Showing her the facility.”
All three soldiers lowered their weapons—fractionally, but Kit saw it as a positive sign—and moved aside. Archer didn't seem put off in the least as he walked between them and continued down a narrow, winding space between the massed bodies.
The walkway opened into a killing ground thirty feet wide. The empty space was set before a huge arc of steel and stone with a single heavy door set in the middle. Brown stains marred the floor across the entire area, though here and there spots of bright red could be seen. Blood, and not all of it old. The coppery smell was thick in the air.
Next to the door stood a single man. He wore the same black clothing as the rest, but no armor, no weapons, and no helmet. Archer greeted him with a solemn nod. “Good morning, Captain Franks. How many this morning?”
Franks nodded back. Kit reined in her reaction; the man's face was a ruin of scars. His nose had been broken enough times that there wasn't much shape left to it, with cauliflower ears to match. One cheekbone was high and pointed, the other smashed flat. Thin lines ran down the middle of his face and passed over his brows and lips, both of which had suffered as a result. How his eyes had escaped intact was beyond her, but even on her assignments Kit had rarely seen anything as bad as that face.
“
Just two this morning, sir. Nothing to write home about,” Franks said.
“
Any casualties?” Archer asked.
“
None of the men, sir. One of my ribs broke on our second go-round, but I'm still good to work.”
Archer gave an approving grunt. “Good, Captain. Very good. Keep at it, then. And if that rib starts to get distracting, you take care of it, hear? We can't afford to lose you.”
Franks gave the ghost of a smile. “Of course, sir.”
As Archer moved toward the featureless door, it opened of its own accord. Kit followed him through and immediately down a set of spiral stairs.
“What the hell was that?” she said as she wound her way down the staircase behind him. “Why the soldiers? Is this a military installation or something?”
“
Not exactly,” he said. “It's a prison. Those boys are making sure no one escapes. And you might have noticed with those black-ops super-spy skills of yours, but they try and nearly succeed depressingly often. Franks is the only Next in that whole unit, and he almost never leaves. Has a little cot over behind a barricade.”
Kit nearly tripped. “Couldn't have gotten someone tougher? That guy looks like hamburger.”
Archer laughed. “Tougher? No. Franks can take a rifle bullet to the face at breakfast and keep reading the morning paper. He's damn hard to hurt, and strong enough to make you look like a lightweight.”
“
Jesus,” Kit said. “Are you telling me you keep Next here strong enough to hurt that guy?”
Archer was breathing hard as they hit the bottom of the steps. He leaned against a wall. “Yeah,” he said. “And that's just minimum security. Which is right this way.”
Stunned, Kit followed. What the hell had Robinson gotten her into? And how could she get out?
Minimum security went by quickly. To Kit it didn't look very
minimum
at all, just a hallway clad in steel broken by an array of heavy doors with tiny cutouts in the bottom, presumably for food trays. The hallway that made up the block was long, with others cutting across it at right angles. Archer hurried her through, but she was still able to catch a glimpse of a team working feverishly to repair a cell door.
At the far end of the block there was yet another door that led to more steps. Even with superhuman strength and endurance, she was getting tired. Archer did this every morning?
Luckily the big man walked right past the spiral staircase and faced a blank section of wall just beyond it. Giant sheets of gleaming metal covered everything here. Archer spoke clearly to the wall.
“
Bypass authorization, please.”
A female voice broke in over a hidden speaker. “Of course, Director Archer. Reason for override, sir?”
The question sounded perfunctory to Kit, and Archer's response sounded rote.
“
Because screw those stairs, Nicki. Open the damn door.”
“
Yes, sir.”
And one of the large steel plates that made up the wall popped forward with a little hiss of released gas and slid smoothly to the side, revealing another elevator.
They entered, Archer giving more voice commands. A few seconds later they were moving downward, very slowly.
The big man slumped against the wall to regain his breath. “So, Agent Singh, what do you think of the place so far?”
Kit shook her head. “I'm...I don't even know how to react. Are we going to higher security areas next? Because if that was the least dangerous section, I can't imagine what the others must look like.”
Archer shook his head. “No, you don't need to see the whole place to understand how vital this facility is. The prison element only takes up about half the space. It's one of three in the country, though this one is the biggest. We house people that the normal system can't handle. We have judges and lawyers on duty here during regular working hours. Full-time staff to make meals, serve as guards, you name it.”
He made a small gesture with his hand that seemed to encompass the whole place. “I know it looks like something out of a Heinlein book, but it's all necessary. Metal is harder to break through than concrete, and you can electrify it.”
Kit grimaced. She remembered her training with Helix all too well. One of the few weaknesses most Next had was electrical shock. Shrugging off bullets means very little when your nervous system is being told to sit down and shut up by a hundred thousand volts.
“The entire place is riddled with hidden doors and elevators to allow the staff to escape in case of a mass breakout. They're hidden because—”
Kit saw it. “Because you want to herd any who escape in an obvious direction. Make them head toward a place you can defend. Like that entrance with the soldiers.”
Archer gave an approving wink. “Yep. And it works. The minimum security inmates break out often, but they're also the hardest to control. Most you can't get with a needle if you want to sedate them, and gas only works for a short time. They metabolize toxins and drugs like booze, in no time flat. We could take certain other measures to keep them from breaking out, but since we don't want to turn into a murder factory, those options aren't really on the table.
“
That's why we let them work over the doors to their cells rather than electrocute them constantly. They're super strong and tough, but the fact is they're the least of our worries. None of them have powers that allow them to create massive damage. It's good practice for our security people, and it keeps the prisoners occupied with their own plans rather than, say, forming up into a big team.”
Kit shivered. The idea of a unified group of Next all bent on escaping was too frightening to even consider.
But then, if this was to be her new job, she'd better
start
considering it. Archer clearly had.
The elevator hummed as it trundled downward, and Archer continued.
“The higher-security levels are dangerous even for the staff. Whole sections are electrified all the time, and most cells below minimum security are outfitted with EMP boxes.”
“
EMP? What is that?” Kit asked.
“
Electromagnetic pulse,” Archer said. “You must know. It's one of the few ways to disrupt a Next's powers.”
Kit shook her head. “I didn't know that.”
Archer straightened. “How could you not? You're in Helix. Aren't you guys the go-to crew for taking out superhuman threats?”
Kit shook her head. “No. Not at all. Our assignments were mostly anti-terrorism, humans only or taking out installations. We even had standing orders to abort if we came into contact with enemy Next.”
“Why...” Archer began, his eyes going vague as his mind worked it through. “Fuck me, of course. Robinson. He didn't want to make you too dangerous. Kept you in the dark as much as he could, in case one of you went bad.”
“
No, no, he's not like that,” Kit said. “Robinson recruited me personally. Watched out for me. He gave us a safe place. A home.”
Archer snorted. “Turned you into weapons, you mean. Withheld crucial information from you. Tell me, what kind of training did you get?”
Kit wasn't expecting the question. “Uh, the standard Helix stuff. Infiltration, combat training, tactics, mental exercises to control our abilities.”
Archer clapped his hands in excitement. “Exactly! You're supposed to be something like CIA, right? But you got no training that would allow you to vanish if you wanted to. Nothing that turns you into suped-up versions of Jason Bourne.”
“No. Nothing like that. Mostly things we'd need in the field to break apart terrorist cells and capture enemies,” Kit said.
Archer ran a hand through his hair. “Robinson. That old prick has a lot of nerve. If Helix had been allowed to form within the military—and have no doubt, it probably should have based on your duties—then they'd have had accountability. Layers of regulations and red tape. Robinson wanted his own private army, answerable only to him.”