Chapter 17

Pov - Assistant Director "String"

I hung up the phone and looked at Brows.

"See? I just did what I asked you to do without any issues. Why couldn't you do the same?"

Brows was a young man. He joined the GOC shortly after he graduated with a major in communications and showed some promise when targeting younger audiences. I had hoped he would do well with what we assumed was a young man, but it seems like I gave Brows too much credit.

"I'm sorry sir. I was told to just report whatever interactions I had with him. I have never had a threat try to negotiate a deal with me. I had no idea of what to do, I don't think I even have the authorization to even conduct a deal with a threat."

I hummed. He was right about not having the authority, but still…

"So you panicked and almost ruined the image KTE-12725 had of us."

He looked ashamed and frustrated. I understood his feelings, but this was unacceptable. What if he had ruined our already poor relationship with Red?

"I'm sorry, Brows, but you won't be trusted with this kind of assignment again for a long time."

Brows steeled his face, he was either sad or angry and didn't want to show me how he felt. Pity.

"Yes sir."

_______________________________________________________________

Pov - Gabriel Garcia

My talk with the GOC had actually gone much better than what I thought it would have gone like. Granted, I was still somewhat skeptical of how 'good' these guys were, but I guess we didn't start off on the wrong foot.

Apparently all my demands were acceptable and they were okay with them, so it was natural for me to accept some of theirs. They had asked me to work with someone of their choosing for the time being, but I felt like that was a plus at the moment. I wasn't really sure how I could go around and not cause more problems than whatever I would no doubt run into. Watching a pro do her work would be nice.

Now I just had to meet with this Skips woman, and see how things worked out. She was supposed to be some seasoned Strike Team operative. Apparently she was the closest and most qualified agent around my area.

After my encounter with the Foundation, I had gone north and was now somewhere in Montana. I was pretty happy that the phone I had still had battery because there was no way I could have found Helena without the maps app.

I was supposed to meet with Skips in some sort of cafe. I was not given much information about her other than her codename and where I should meet her. Knowing what she looked like would have been nice, but you win some, you lose some.

I hoped she wasn't an asshole, it would be annoying to have to be around that kind of person.

_______________________________________________________________

I entered the little restaurant where I would meet this Skips person, and cringed at the almost overwhelming smell of coffee. How did people enjoy this?

The place looked really nice and welcoming. It did not have that cold feeling most starbucks gave, so that was nice. It reminded me a bit of some bakeries I had gone to as a kid.

The walls were just bricks and the wood tables gave the place some old-style vibe. It feels like a place I would have enjoyed visiting to study with some friends.

I looked at a black board behind a bar counter to see what I could get and saw that they also sold bread.

I got some apple bread and sat down at one of the furthest tables from the front door.

My mom used to say food tasted the best when you were hungry and I could safely say it actually tasted the best after not having eaten anything after a couple of weeks. So without much preamble I began eating my slice of apple bread.

Being able to just get wherever I wanted with no vehicles still amazed me. My ability to shrink space in between me and other places was really useful . It was fun to basically zoom around the city, a bit weird but you got used to it.

As I was about to finish my bread a woman walked into the restaurant. She had some scars in her face and looked absolutely done with life. Damn, did the GOC not give their agents vacation time?

Skips looked around and immediately spotted me. She began walking towards me and when she finally reached me she looked me up and down before frowning a little.

"You Red?"

I swallowed the piece of bread I had been munching on and extended my hand at her.

"Yup, you Skips?"

She shook my hand and grunted a bit. "Call me Marie. I don't like my nickname."

"Nickname? Aren't they supposed to be codenames?"

She gave me a look and answered. "No, they are more of a tradition."

"Alright… You okay? You look fed up with everything."

She picked up the last piece of bread I had left on my plate and ate it as she shrugged.

"No, I've had a terrible month and now I have been ordered to work with an anomaly. Come on, let's leave."

She turned around and began walking towards the exit.

_______________________________________________________________

"So… What are we doing?"

We were in Marie's car at the moment. Apparently she had been assigned a mission before she was diverted to meet with me. She told me that we would first get done with it before we did anything else. And you know what? I was okay with that, it would be interesting to see how she worked.

"The police reported to us an unusual incident."

I waited for her to continue, but she never did. She was not an asshole, she was just not very talkative.

"... Anything more you're gonna tell me? Aren't we supposed to work as partners or something from now on?"

Her face scrunched up a bit before she sighed and glanced at me for a moment before looking back at the road.

"Somehow a house's exterior wall was blown up with no apparent cause. It was first thought as a gas accident, then as an attack to the family living, but a cause behind the damage was never found."

That sounded way more interesting than just checking on an 'incident'.

"So we are going to try and find the cause behind the damage?"

"No, a kid said she saw a lawn mower just ram into the house. She was adamant about it, we will go there to search for more clues on the lawn mower."

… wtf?

_______________________________________________________________

"So your daughter just saw a lawn mower hit the house? Where did it come from?"

The lady we were talking to looked like she wanted to just shut her front door on our faces but answered nonetheless.

"Look, I don't know what Lily saw, but if you want to know more ask someone else. Why are you even taking some obviously made up lie seriously? I have stuff to do, so goodbye."

And… she closed the door.

I looked at Marie and saw her scowling.

"Is this how things usually go? Cuz I can't imagine how you would go about doing your job and if this is your way of doing stuff. You'd never get anything done"

"No, this is what I do when there is no obvious lead to follow."

We began walking away from the house when we saw a car coming into the neighborhood and parked outside the house in front of the damaged house. Right in front of where the giant hole was….

"How about we ask her?" I pointed at the woman getting out of her car with her kid.

She glanced at her and then at me.

"Uh huh, and what do you think she'll tell us? I bet she will just blow us off or babble some nonsense like the rest of the neighborhood. Let's leave, it's obvious we won't find anything here."

She unlocked her car and got into it, meanwhile, I stared at how the mother was trying to get the kid to hurry up into her house.

There was something about the kid that made me tense. Call it a gut feeling, but I knew this family knew something.

I started walking up to the new house's front door when I heard Marie yell at me.

"C'mon Red, we've wasted enough time here! You won't find anything more!"

I turned my head a little at her.

"I got a good feeling about this one!"

I heard her mutter some swear words before she got out of the house and started stomping her way at me. I just rang the bell to the house and waited.

"What do you mean you have a good feeling about this one? Are you gonna tell me your gut is prophetic?"

"I mean… no? It's just something about that kid that felt weird to me."

Finally the woman who had just entered her house opened the door and interrupted whatever Marie was about to say.

"I'm not interested in buying anyt-'' She looked at Marie's uniform, and then at me and just sighed.

"I've already given my statements twice, why are you guys bothering me again?"

I looked at Marie and she just motioned me to continue. Apparently she wasn't going to help me, maybe she just wanted to be able to tell me 'I told you so' after I somehow screwed up this 'interview'.

"Hello, we are not with the police." I made my hair change colors a few times before making it go back to red. I pointed at the house behind me and began talking. "May we talk about how that giant hole was made?"

She was too stunned to say anything and just let us into her house.

_______________________________________________________________

"So, you are not here to take Mathew away?" Sarah looked very distressed at the moment.

"No, we are not here for that. Still, I'm impressed how long you've managed to keep his abilities a secret. How'd you do that?"

Sarah took a sip from her glass of water and looked at the floor.

"Mathew's powers are weird and manifested pretty recently. It was a bit after he began playing that plants and zombies game. He just walked up to me and showed me how he had 'super plants' like 2 months ago."

"It must have been stressful."

She chuckled a bit and shook her head.

"Not that much, when he stops paying attention his little friends just disappear. I also managed to convince him to not let anyone else know about his plants."

That's good. The kid was obviously a type green, why his powers were connected to PvZ was a mystery to me, but whatever.

Marie finally stopped glaring at me and turned towards Sarah. "I'm surprised no one noticed anything."

"I don't know how, but his imagination is connected to his powers, I just convinced him no one could see his plants or they'd disappear, and that has actually worked. It has helped in hiding them."

I glanced at Marie and sent her a telepathic message.

"Definitely a type green."

She jumped and glared at me again while Sarah just began looking out one of the windows in her kitchen.

"The real problem is that at night he imagines zombies coming to our house and they actually appear."

Ahh. "That does sound like an issue."

"I'm pretty sure his power also makes them appear, the thing is, they only appear at night. And Mathew has got it into his head that people can't see zombies at night or something. Because of that they are not noticed and they don't disappear."

She looked stressed again.

"He's been fighting the zombies with his plants every night since like the second week he got his powers. After a while he gets bored and goes to sleep and they disappear."

Marie sighed and asked in an annoyed tone. "So the lawn mower from last week?"

Sarah nodded. "Yeah, a zombie got to close to the house and it just appeared out of nowhere and ran over a bunch of zombies, it continued running and crashed into Mr. Williams' house."

This was weird, I had expected we would have to fight some kind of demon lawn mower, not deal with a reality bender.

I looked at Marie and then glanced at Sarah. "Please give us a couple of minutes, I need to talk to my partner."

_______________________________________________________________

We had just gotten back into Marie's car once more when she turned to me and asked. "How did you send that message?"

I was a bit confused before I remember I had told her about my theory on what Mathew was. I was a bit annoyed I had to search around the phone Sling had given me just to find out what type greens are.

"Ah, I learned I could project my thoughts with some effort a long time ago."

She frowned. "So you didn't invade my mind?"

I tried to look as offended as I possibly could. "No, I dislike the idea of just skulking around someone's mind. I just make my thoughts 'louder'." I wasn't really offended, I had come to terms with the fact people would assume the worst when I talked to them telepathically.

"Alright, next time try not to be so imposing when sending messages."

I frowned a bit.

"Was my presence still too big when projected?"

She looked demurely at me. "Yes, it was very unnerving."

I huffed. I didn't have much practice with telepathy.

"What are we going to do about Mathew?" I asked.

"Your file said you could entirely erase stuff. Could you erase him and everyone's memories of him?"

I stared at her as intensely as I could, and then decided to glare at her.

"I will not delete a 12 year old from existence. What is wrong with you?"

She looked annoyed and then glared back at me. "We have to get rid of him somehow, you erasing him in that way would save us a lot of time."

"Fuck off, we will not 'get rid' of Mathew."

"Then what do you propose huh? We let a type green put in danger the lives around him and threaten to reveal the existence of anomalies to the public?"

I decided to let a bit of my soul out and smother her with as much pressure as I felt safe. I needed to make my stance clear on this. If I had to threaten her, so be it.

"I don't know, let me think of something, but we won't be killing a kid today."

_______________________________________________________________

AN

Alright, that's chapter 17 done. What are your thoughts on the path the story is taking?

Some stuff is glossed over since I don't want to write everything the MC does, but I hope everything makes sense.

If any of y'all find a spelling mistake, has questions, has some criticism, or whatever, please leave a comment. I enjoy reading them.

Thanks for reading.