Knowing for a fact that someone was out to kill her felt like it should have changed things for Dyna. Instead, she found herself going about her days roughly the same. She got up in the mornings, exercised, had breakfast, went to meetings, trainings, or spent time on her gadgets. The content and context of all her activities had changed. She was now actively working toward both defending herself from oblique attackers, like those snipers who had very nearly shot her, as well as coming up with countermeasures for advanced tulpa entities.
The mountain man had shrugged off most external attacks, but had been vulnerable to a gadget. External attacks slowed the Hatman, but didn’t stop it. Now this murder doll that Ignotus stole from Tartarus was, after asking for more information, similar in that conventional weaponry and tactics wouldn’t do much to keep it from attacking. Dyna’s laser pointer could violate causality. Unfortunately, causality didn’t matter much when the opponent could just ignore bullets.
A bright flash of light on the opposite side of a thick, pisonically-insulated glass pane made Dyna flinch. Not quite as much as the Hatman flinched, however.
“Test complete,” Beatrice said. “Analysis of effect underway.”
Dyna slowly lowered a set of thick goggles, letting them dangle around her neck. Doctor Cross did the same, while Administrator Gamma and Doctor Teeth kept their goggles on. November rounded out the Phrenomorphics team present at this experiment, but she hadn’t bothered with the protective goggles in the first place.
Matt would normally be present, but he had exemptions in his contract for anything that dealt with the Hatman. Quite understandably, in Dyna’s opinion.
For her part, Dyna stepped closer to the window. The room they were in was an observation room built into the ceiling of a large, empty chamber. The windows were slanted outward, allowing them to look down into the room proper with nothing obstructing their view. An array of monitors displayed camera feeds from inside the room, allowing a closer view, but Dyna wanted to see the Hatman with her own eyes.
Or… what was left of the Hatman.
A vaguely humanoid puddle of tar was smeared across the ground where the Hatman had been standing before the bright flash of light.
“Is it dead?”
“Preliminary readings of psionic energy in the chamber indicate—”
“No,” November interrupted.
Teeth turned and frowned at the tulpa, who was up close to the window just as Dyna was. “I was going to say that,” he said.
“The Hatman isn’t dead. Most of him was forced back into the noosphere, however. What remains is probably harmless.”
“Promising,” Gamma said, arms behind her back. “Will it reconstitute itself?”
“I think so,” November said, squinting. A particularly volatile burst of static crossed her eyes. “As long as some of it remains on this side, it will claw its way back here eventually.”
“Define eventually. What is the timescale we are looking at? Minutes? Hours? Longer?”
November just shook her head. “Your machines can probably give you more accurate information than I.”
“It worked and it is obviously going to work for at least a few minutes,” Dyna said, pointing at the puddle. It sure didn’t look like the Hatman was pulling itself back together. There were some disturbing movements in the greasy surface, but it wasn’t standing up. “That is the important part. Tartarus had to calibrate their disruptor weapons specifically for the Hatman. Is the same true here or will that work on any tulpa?”
“The amount of power we put into this should make it work on anything,” Doctor Teeth said. “Or, to be more accurate, we did not calibrate this specifically for the Hatman, thus it is assumed that this will work on any target.”
“Can we package this up into a hand-held weapon?”
Doctor Teeth looked up. “Well, not entirely.” He pointed at the wall of the room below where two silver-suited technicians were moving around an array of satellite dishes that were all aimed in the direction of the Hatman. “The components can be shrunk down to the rough size of a shopping cart. Maybe even smaller, depending on the outcome of this test. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the components can be miniaturized enough to be a hand-held—”
“Not without significant reduction in power draw,” Doctor Cross interrupted, hand brushing over a terminal as he slowly shook his head. His glasses gleamed as he looked to Dyna.
“Why are you even here?” Teeth said, eyes narrow. “This has nothing to do with artifacts or anomalous materials.”
“Obviously someone thought it wise to procure a man of my talents. At the very least, I can keep your incessant blabbering on—”
“Doctors,” Gamma warned, eyes touching each before looking below again.
When Gamma didn’t continue, Dyna took the moment of silence as an opportunity to continue her questions. “This is just an upscaled disruptor gun, isn’t it? Tartarus had hand-held versions. They didn’t have quite that much of an effect, but they still worked and could fire multiple times before the battery went dry. You can’t make this version fire even once?”
“Well… no. At least not yet. First, we need to scale it down to a human-manageable size, then run some tests to determine whether or not it has the same effect at a smaller scale, after—”
“Tartarus had a larger version of the disruptor guns hooked up to their truck. Can you do something similar with that?” Dyna asked, pointing at the array of satellite dishes.
“I’m not sure how much power draw that version had, but it probably didn’t reach the level we need here,” Teeth mumbled. “A truck would still probably work, but our disruptor would need a separate power plant to operate at current specifications.”
“Better than nothing,” Gamma said. “Get it done. Then get working on making it smaller.” Keeping her hands firmly in place at the small of her back, Gamma turned and strode from the room without another word.
“Well,” Dyna said after watching her go. “For the time being, would it be possible to get a replica of the normal disruptor gun that Tartarus used?”
“Not having any luck with your gadgets?” Cross asked.
Dyna shrugged. “Everything I make tends to be somewhat random. What works on minor tulpa might not work on major ones. Having hard science in one hand with pseudo-science in the other seems the best option at the moment.”
Not to mention, Dyna had not been having any luck. She had not been able to make any new gadget, let alone one directed at tulpa. Irritating, but not altogether unexpected. Other psychics being around tended to help form gadgets, but nobody except November and Matt really had psychic abilities that interacted with tulpa. Both of them were more detectors than aggressors.
“I see,” Cross said, stroking the stubble on his recently shaved chin.
“I don’t suppose the Vault has any actual artifacts that seem like they might help?”
“You have the list of artifacts.”
“Yes, but you’re the one who knows the most about them.”
“True,” Cross said. “I’ll look through my notes this evening, though they might not be easy for you to acquire. You would have to convince the administrators to relinquish the artifacts to you, not me.”
That, Dyna knew, wasn’t going to happen. She had put in request after request to be granted even temporary permission to use the magnifying glass again. All had been denied near instantly.
Beatrice rang two notification tones in the room. “Doctor Cross, report to Anomalous Materials Intake Laboratory please.”
Cross looked up, confused for just a moment before nodding his head. “Oh, that must be the portal device from the meat packing plant. Anomalous or not, non-artifacts are not really my specialty or interest.” Shrugging, he shot a look to Teeth. “It truly is a curse to be as qualified as I am.”
For his part, Teeth had his back to the rest of the room, hunched over a terminal near the large windows. He either hadn’t heard or was pretending he hadn’t heard. Whatever the case, Cross let out a small chuckle before departing the small observation room.
Deciding to not stick around in an awkward atmosphere, not really wanting to hear Teeth complain about Cross, Dyna started to leave as well. Before she could make it to the door, it slid open.
Id stepped inside, silver mask in place with her hair flowing behind her in a long ponytail. Walter entered alongside her, a step behind. His mirrored glasses surveyed the room before stopping on Dyna.
Their presence put her on edge immediately. In an almost subconscious movement, she pulled her mirror from her pocket. Everything looked normal, though that wasn’t completely foolproof as she had learned from that bomber at the restaurant. Despite that reassurance, the hairs on her neck stood on end.
“What happened?”
Walter pressed his lips together for a moment before he opened his mouth.
Id spoke first. “Nothing to worry about,” she said. “In fact, you might consider this a brief windfall of good fortune. For I have decided to work with the Carroll Institute until we have defeated our mutual irritant.”
“Oh… good?”
“The first order of business,” Walter said, “is accelerating our capabilities to defend and assault the tulpa forces Ignotus-33 is using.”
“To that end, Ado and Doctor Darq will be working with the institute. I hear you are trying to replicate our disruptor technology.”
“Replicate?” Doctor Teeth said with a barely-concealed scoff. “We are building upon it, advancing it, and utilizing it to a far greater effect than you managed.” He swung an arm down, pointing at the smear on the floor that had once been the Hatman. “Observe the end-state of an entity affected by our device.”
“That glob of goop is an entity?” Id said, stepping right up to the window and bending her waist until she was practically parallel with the ground. “You overpowered the machine, I presume. We specifically tried to avoid that; microwaving people isn’t in our best interests.”
“It doesn’t take as much power as you might expect based on your primitive designs. A retooling of the disruption wave function means that it can both affect entities without calibrating to their unique psionic resonance and it uses less power.”
“Enough to be portable?” Id asked, mask swiveling over to the array of satellite dishes.
“That… I mean… We are working—”
“Teeth,” Walter said in a tone near-identical to that used by Gamma when she had been admonishing the doctors. “The original creators of the device will surely have some valuable input. Administrator Theta has already expressed interest in working closer with Tartarus. I have contact information,” he said, moving closer while pulling out a small data drive. “Don’t mess this up.”
As Walter moved across the room to Doctor Teeth, Id leaned down next to Dyna and began whispering.
“Something is wrong in the Carroll Institute.”
“So you are trying to recruit me.”
“Not necessarily. Just trying to ensure your continued existence. Your cogitator brain was trying to warn me of something earlier. Danger, for you and me. Something to do with one or more of the administrators. I don’t know what, exactly, and now it won’t talk to me anymore. By order of the administration, I assume.”
Dyna frowned, eyes moving to the corner of the room. The little red light underneath the camera array was trained directly on Dyna. Beatrice tried to tell Id something? But hadn’t told Dyna?
“It wasn’t very clear,” Id said, standing and watching as Walter got one of the terminals connected. Ado appeared in one of the monitors, face hidden by the same mask that Id wore. “I don’t think the cogitator could speak freely, but I do think I am a master at picking up on subtle cues and I was getting some pretty hard cues from the conversation.”
Dyna moved away from Id, walking around the room to get a better look at the terminal Walter was setting up. Except, her eyes weren’t on the monitor. She kept her view trained on the camera in the corner of the room.
It was following her. Every step caused a minor rotation in the five lenses. They twisted, adjusting focus when she stepped closer. When she stepped back, they refocused then as well.
Generally, the cameras just pointed into the room. Sometimes they would focus on someone in particular if they were the only one present, but usually, they just stayed staring out over the rooms as a whole. Dyna often felt like Beatrice kept an eye on her more than normal, but she couldn’t remember it ever being quite so obvious as it was now.
It wasn’t proof of Id’s claims, but it certainly was suspicious.
“Ado!” Id said, walking right past Dyna. “So lovely to see you again.”
Dyna frowned as she watched Id’s back. The woman spoke casually, chatting with Ado while informing her of the requirements for her new engineering job. Nothing she said betrayed worry or concern with the situation. In fact, just the opposite, it looked like she was laid back and relaxed.
Beatrice had helped Dyna many times in the past. If Beatrice had told her that something was wrong, she would have believed it instantly. If she wasn’t saying anything, nothing was wrong. Or she was forbidden from speaking to her… but not to Id until partway through their conversation, at which point she had been forbidden from doing that as well.
The actions of the administrators cannot be overruled.
Assuming Id was telling the truth.
Would she lie? Probably. Maybe?
Grinding her teeth together, Dyna ran her fingers through her hair.
She needed to know more. The full context of whatever warning Id supposedly received and how she received it, at the very least. Unfortunately, Dyna doubted she would be able to get Id alone. Id would have asked to see her alone if she thought that was an option. Beatrice would always be watching—not normally a problem, but if the administrators were doing something.
Going over endless possibilities wasn’t productive.
First of all, Dyna sent a simple question mark to Beatrice from her phone. Asking the source directly, even with the administrators watching, seemed like the best option. Beatrice was a super-computer. Able to calculate a trillion possibilities in a split second, she would be able to find some way around the administrators preventing her from at least giving her a clue unless the administrators had placed a full block on her, at which point the silence would be just as damning.
Dyna barely sent the message off before three sharp wails stole the attention of everyone in the observation room. From the corner of her eye, she watched as the heavy blast doors down below in the observation room slid open. “Facility Alert: Containment failure in Phrenomorphics Experimentation Laboratories. All personnel evacuate to nearest Safety Room. Tulpa containment team to Phrenomorphics Experimentation Laboratories immediately.”
“My,” Id said, sounding not the least bit concerned, “is that a common occurrence at the institute?”
“I’ve never heard it before in my life,” Teeth said, clearly nervous as he glanced around at the various terminals in the room. “This place should be safe. It is highly shielded against psionic intrusion. We didn’t want to take any chances when dealing with the likes of the Hatman.”
Walter had his phone to his ear. It sounded like he was issuing orders to Emerald and Ruby.
Dyna barely heard him. Phone gripped tight in her hand, she had to wonder if that was her answer. “November,” she said, loud enough to be heard over the blaring alarm. “Did the Hatman move?”
Similar to Id, November sounded barely concerned with the situation. As if it were someone else’s problem. Which was probably an accurate assessment. “No. I can see him. He is… attached to his remains somehow.”
Dyna blinked, then nodded slowly. The containment failure was in the laboratory down below. Obviously. That heavy door was not supposed to move while an experiment was in progress. That probably meant that the mountain man had not escaped. Nor had any of the lower-tier tulpa. The door had simply slid open. On its own.
Or under Beatrice’s command.
This was Beatrice’s answer.
Dyna did not like Beatrice’s answer.