The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 8: To Protect and Serve

Book 2: Chapter 8: To Protect and Serve

The shopping center was a smoking, blasted, cratered ruin. It wasn't the worst thing Dan had ever seen, nothing he'd encountered yet could really compare to the the twisted Atlanta that Marcus had created for him. But it was... bad. Dan could easily follow the trail of the carnage, where it had begun, and where it had ended.

Most of the initial damage was focused near the center of the strip mall. The little flower shop where things had first kicked off was completely collapsed. Even now, paramedics rushed to and fro, digging away at the debris and pulling out bodies. Dan had been assigned to assist them.

He carefully made his way across the rubble-filled parking lot, shouldering both his emergency bag and the satchel of medical supplies he'd been given upon his arrival. Ambulances constantly flowed in and out of the police checkpoint, set up in the middle of the road. Emergency workers ran stretchers from the storefronts to the sidewalk, loading bloodied victims into the vehicles. Most were wounded, still alive, but not all. Dan had counted five body bags being hauled away in the brief few minutes since he'd arrived.

His footing began to slip as he grew closer to the center of the strip. The concrete was running red, a constant stream of watered down blood flowing downhill. His boots squelched with every step. Huge patches of concrete had been frozen over, and were now melting. An ice user had fought here.

Dan recognized one of the emergency workers digging through the rubble, an older woman named Micaela Sanchez. She scraped away layers of dirt and debris with a shovel, her gloved hands wrenching at the handle with frustrated motions. A uniformed officer stood beside her, helping to lift away the heaviest chunks of concrete. There were maybe a dozen other men and women, split between emergency workers, crisis volunteers, and police officers, scattered about the immediate premises.

It was difficult to see where one shop ended and the other began. Dan could make out the rough borders of what used to be a florist, where the walls hadn't quite been knocked over, but the edges were jagged and crumbling. Only a single support pillar remained standing, in fact. A lone, heroic column draped in flower petals and smeared with blood. Dan's paranoia was ringing alarm bells in his mind.

"Is this place stable?" he asked without preamble, squatting next to Micaela.

The older woman glanced up from where she'd been feverishly shoveling concrete. Her eyes were filled with worry.

"No," she replied simply, before returning to her work.

"Fuck."

"We've got people monitoring structural shifts," the officer beside her supplied. "We'll at least have a moment's warning if the building's gonna collapse."

"Right." Dan nodded. "Better work quick, then."

"You're the first proper sensor to arrive," Micaela said. She grunted, as a particularly gnarled mess of concrete and rebar dislodged from the pile. It crashed down against the broken carpet, kicking up a plume of dust.

"Link up with someone who can lift, and start tagging bodies. Now what do we have—" The dust settled, and Dan could make out bare skin. A person's hand, feebly grasping. Micaela let out a whoop of victory as the officer immediately began to tear away the surrounding rubble.

"I knew I heard a heartbeat in there!" she crowed joyously.

"Good catch," Dan said, slapping her shoulder as he moved deeper into the building. His veil swept out of his body, and sank into the ground. Information trickled into his brain. Steel, stone, iron, rocks and dirt. Plants, petals and stems. Wooden structures that he assumed were once display pieces, but were now little more than rubbish. Then, flesh! Blood and muscle!

Unmoving. A corpse. The mere fact that his power could interact with it, told Dan the truth. He sighed, but called over a digger anyway. If the poor fellow had a family, they deserved to know. One of the officers peeled away from the greater group, and pressed his hand against the wreckage where Dan had indicated. A low hum filled the air, as the concrete slowly crumbled away.

"About eight feet in," Dan said somberly. "Take it slow, just in case."

The man nodded, and continued his work. Dan moved on.

He swept several more piles, thankfully finding no bodies. He noted several dozen bullet holes as he walked, along with a car-sized block of melting ice near the back of the store, halfway embedded in the rear wall. The ground was furrowed on either side, indicating a short slide. Someone had tossed the massive thing into the store. It was a single solid chunk of ice, far too heavy to move. He supposed emergency workers were waiting for a heat based upgrade to melt the thing, though Austin's weather was doing a fair job by itself.

Dan ran his veil past it, and nearly flinched when it brushed against what was left of a body. Some poor soul had been in the way when the massive cube of ice had been hurled into the store. The person had been struck, and the cube had rolled after impact, crushing the body beneath the ground. There was quite a bit of water draining beneath the floor as the ice melted. His veil gave him a perfectly clear picture of it, dark red liquid mixing and diluting as it drained down into the ground.

He called an officer over, and delivered his report. The man sighed.

"I don't suppose you've got a way to get rid of the ice?" he asked Dan.

Dan scratched at his chin. "I can try."

He knelt beside the cube, and sank his veil into it. Slowly, surgically, he began to scoop away ice from within, pulsing his veil to send chunks of it into t-space. He felt like his veil was a chestburster, chewing its way out of the ice cube's frozen center. Dan took his time, worried about tipping the massive thing over on himself and the officer. Minutes passed, as more and more emergency workers arrived. Bodies were carted away, more dead than alive.

Eventually, the ice cube lost enough mass that it simply crumbled in on itself. The officer helped scoop the remains away until they uncovered the brutalized body within. Dan stared at the mess of blood and viscera, the pulped remains of what used to be a man, before stepping to the side and retching into a corner. The officer covered his face with a handkerchief, hiding his own disgusted grimace.

"We have to... bag him up," the officer said grimly.

Dan nodded, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "I'll take his legs."

"Check his pockets first," the officer said, unrolling a zippered body bag. "We're trying to ID the dead as fast as possible."

Dan's gut clenched, but he did what he had to. His hands patted down the man's pockets until he found a lump. He quickly worked the wallet out of the corpse's pants, before stepping away. He was panting, his heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he'd just run a marathon.

"You good?" the officer asked.

"I'm good," Dan lied. "Get his arms."

Together, they worked the body into the bag. The officer called for a stretcher, and they loaded the corpse up. Dan and his companion left the ruined flower shop, followed by another pair of emergency workers as they carted yet another body to the waiting ambulances. Once there, Dan transferred his burden to cleaner, steadier hands. He leaned up against the side of an ambulance and just breathed for a moment.

The officer that had accompanied him walked beside him and lit a cigarette. Together, they watched more bodies being brought out from the ruins. Some were still breathing, still moving. Most of those were too injured to scream; a long, low, constant moan filled the air.

Dan's companion took a deep drag of his cigarette, blowing out an angry breath.

"Fucking Coldeyes!" the officer spat.

Dan glanced at him, thankful for the distraction. He'd heard of the two major Austin gangs: Coldeyes' Crew and the Scales. While the Scales stood out through their exaggerated physical modifications, the Coldeyes preferred members with ice upgrades and mutations. Even the fucking gangs held strong to their respective themes. Dan had heard rumors within the department that the leader of the gang, Coldeyes himself, was a cryokinetic on par with Cold Star, that decades old villain who'd attempted to freeze the Great Lakes.

Coldeyes' Crew was widespread across the southwestern border of the United States. Their growth had not slowed at all over the past decade, easily consolidating power in the largest cities of Colorado, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, but the Scales had given them significant trouble here in Austin. The quiet, cold war that had been raging for months was quickly threatening to escalate into something overt and horrific.

The ice on the ground and... everywhere else, seemed like fairly strong evidence for Coldeyes' involvement.

"So it was them, then?" Dan asked.

The officer shrugged. "What other criminals use ice in the city? And who else would be this overt? It has to be them." He shook his head. "There will be consequences for this. We'll get them for it."

Dan decided to press. Just about every officer in the APD knew that he'd foiled a bombing attempt on the station, and they were generally inclined to go easy on him. Even if his question was crossing a line, it was unlikely the man would take offense.

"Did you guys find any actual proof it was Coldeyes' Crew? Other than the ice, I mean."

The officer grimaced. "Not yet. The whole thing was over in less than thirty seconds, and the assailants were masked. It's not like they announced themselves before attacking."

"What the hell were they attacking for, anyway?" Dan asked. "Has anyone figured that out?"

"They probably ran into some Scales," the officer suggested. "We'll know for sure once we've checked the surveillance cameras."

"No luck there," a familiar voice spoke. "The cameras were destroyed before the attack."

Dan spun around, spotting Sergeant Kaneda Ito as he picked his way through the debris in the parking lot. The scarred Asian man glanced at Dan. "Any survivors?"

Dan shook his head in the negative. "Not that I could find."

Ito cursed. His eyes roamed Dan, landing on his bloody gloves. "You ok?"

"No Kenny, I'm pretty goddamn far from okay," Dan replied.

The sergeant nodded. "That's to be expected. But why are you holding a wallet?"

Dan blinked, then glanced at his hands. The man's bloody wallet was still clenched in his fist. Numbly, he flipped it open and flicked through the man's belongings, searching for identification. There were a few pictures of a woman who looked dimly familiar, some cash and credit cards. He felt the thick plastic of a driver's license, and dragged it free. It came out with difficulty, alongside several business cards.

Dan fanned them out and read, "James Webb. Born February, Nineteen-Eighty-One. There's an address too. Who do I give this—" His voice stuttered as his eyes caught the rest of what he was holding. The first was a business card for the Flower Shed. That name matched what was left of the name above the destroyed florist. Behind that card was another, and Dan saw the upper edges of a crest. The words Department of Justice were listed in-between two edges of a circle. Beneath it, a band of stars, above a shield emblazoned by scales and flanked by laurels. The logo of the FBI. Dan slid the card out and read it.

"James Webb," he repeated. "Analyst." He read the address off the laminated card. "He worked at the FBI field office here in Austin."

The three men looked at each other.

"Well... fuck," Ito stated.