The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 182: Vacancy

If the People were even half as disciplined as the Andenos, Dan reflected, then the country was in big trouble. Three days had passed since he'd spoken to Anastasia, and the Andeno family had yet to break its security discipline. The young Nikolos never spoke of his assignment to the older Peter, and Peter never asked. The two went about their days as if they were perfectly normal citizens.

Nikolos was a high school senior, attending a moderately impoverished public school near his house. He seemed popular enough, but Dan had spent very little time watching the young man at school. Dan figured there was only so much mischief he could get up to while attending classes, and very little of it should revolve around vigilantism. During the day, he spent most of his surveillance hours on the older Andeno.

Peter Andeno lived a fantastically disciplined—and boring—life. He was retired, collecting a small pension from his time in the government, and earning money on the side by repairing small odds and ends to sell for a profit. His days mostly consisted of home maintenance and pawn shop trawling, and always he was shadowed by one of his invisible bodyguards. Three days was not a long time to understand a man, but there was something deeply revealing in the well-practiced routine of old Andeno's everyday life.

This was a man who valued repetition, who cultivated monotony. Boredom was his armor, and habit, his shield. No one watching him would ever think he was more than what he presented himself as. Three days, Dan watched him, and he was already sick of it. He knew this was the intention, but it made no difference. Dan wasn't built for stakeouts. Not when the target was so determined to do nothing.

It was strange, though. The EMP device was the only break in Peter's pattern. For all that he played the unassuming old retiree, every time that switch was thrown he definitively proved he wasn't. Peter wasn't hiding it. The damn egg timer went off and, like clockwork, he would throw the switch. Dan had taken to shutting off his doors for a few minutes every time he heard the shrill ringing. It lost him some coverage, but there was nothing he could do about it. Hardened equipment existed, but without knowing exactly what kind of device was in the Andeno's wall, he couldn't know what to buy to counter it.

It wasn't just the egg timer that determined when the switch fell. Nikolos used it whenever he came home from school, as did Peter, when he returned from any trip that took him outside the house. Again, this seemed just another part of their routine. Get home, take off their shoes, lock the door, throw the breaker switch. One of these things was not like the other things. Any observer would immediately conclude the reason why their electronics had failed, but perhaps Dan was looking at things from the wrong perspective.

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The more he watched, the more he was convinced that the Andenos were not worried about government surveillance. Or, rather, they were extremely worried about government surveillance, but they compensated for that with a clockwork lifestyle and a Geist on the porch. Nothing to see, and no reason for anyone to look deeper.

The government printed upgrades like it did currency. There wasn't a lot of variety between federal agents, only degrees of specialization. It wasn't likely that a fed could slip electronic surveillance into their home, and if the Andenos ever fell under that kind of scrutiny, they probably had bigger problems than a bug in their wall. The EMP wasn't extra protection against a nosy fed, therefore it must be for the more exotic threats. Threats like Anastasia's people, who could probably plant a bug of some kind on one of the Andenos, but have no idea why it was getting fried every time they came home. After all, it was only after Dan identified the location of the device that Anastasia could do anything about it.

He was getting distracted. Point was: Peter Andeno wasn't doing shit, and Dan was tired of watching him. He decided to do some poking around at the Evo Church instead, and see what secrets the big building had to hold. He couldn't get his earlier suspicions out of his head, of Geists being posted up on every corner. Dead faced, glassy eyed assassins, embedded in the meat mass of cultists, waiting for trouble to unfold. It gave Dan the fucking creeps.

If nothing turned up at the church, Dan would turn his attention back to Senator Madison for the afternoon. The senator had kept himself busy, the past few days, with a full schedule of fundraising and backroom bartering. Given that his movements were a matter of public record, and his itinerary allowed very little time for side business, Dan wasn't overly concerned at leaving him be for now.

If the good senator wasn't up to anything nefarious, Dan would return to the Andeno home, right in time for young Nikolos to make his way home. The kid had spent the last few nights meditating, and practicing his new powers. His control was remarkable for a new Natural, and very little seemed to slip that wasn't intentional. Dan and Abby were still struggling to determine exactly what he could do. So far, they'd seen him adjusting the way physics affected his body, but whether that applied only to himself was yet to be seen.

The time in D.C. was 10:57 a.m., and morning services at the Church of Infinite Evolution were just ending. Dan spooled up a view of the church's gargantuan front doors, and watched as a stream of civilians moved in and out of the gaping entrance. The building itself reminded him a little of a basketball stadium gone Gothic, but none of the thousands of attendees seemed the slightest bit intimidated by the imposing surroundings, nor by the armed guards that patrolled the circular halls.

There was a certain commonality between the cultists that was immediately obvious. Even by the standards of Dimension A, many of the civilians were physically divergent. It was subtle, only obvious when they were gathered together like this. It wasn't the grotesque twisting of flesh that the Scales favored in Austin; instead, they were sculpted by talented hands into aesthetic marvels. Here, an Elfling walked the world, lithe, long-eared and graceful. There, strolled Michelangelo's David, pale skin of marble, smooth as weather-worn rock, with a figure carved out from antiquity.

Perfection roamed the halls of the Evo Church, a fullness of form married with function that only blind luck or huge piles of money could buy. There was a sort of terrible inevitability to it all, as if the entire building proclaimed that this is how things ought to be, and why not? They all seemed happy enough. Then again, so would anyone, with full pockets and a tight-knit community and a dash of superhuman powers on the side.

The rush of bodies made searching with his veil a little tricky, but Dan managed to slowly sweep his way through the building's main corridor. He was able to assure himself, at least, that no Geists were waiting in the wings to assassinate random cultists. That tracked, he thought. The man who'd gone after Rawls was an actual Geist, trained at Shangri-La like the rest of them. You could only take so many of them away from whatever wetwork they were meant to be doing before someone took notice.

No word thus far if that particular Geist had officially gone missing or not. Apparently they were given a great deal of leeway in their operations; when not on assignment they were meant to live like civilians. Deniable assets, Dan supposed. Maybe. The point was, the Evo Church, or Madison, or the Andenos could have subverted a number of them without anyone knowing, but they would eventually be called into service. What would happen then, Dan couldn't begin to guess. It would depend on the method of subversion, he supposed.

The main corridor wrapped around the entire building, but it branched off dozens of times from there. Most were small hallways leading to various offices, others to single offices or sitting rooms. It was disorienting, switching between all the different viewpoints, not to mention difficult. Instead, Dan snaked out a few thin tendrils and let his veil feed him information. Whenever he encountered a guard—usually identifiable by ballistic vest and firearm—he would pop open a door and get a visual.

Dan didn't find any Geists, though he did build a fairly detailed internal map of the Evo Church's interior. It might be interesting to compare it to the official blueprint of the place. There were already a few places he suspected were not on spec, like the underground basement where Madison had retrieved his power-granting block of wood. Unfortunately, nothing else so obvious had popped up yet. Dan supposed all the really suspicious stuff would be stuffed underground, as seemed custom in Dimension A.

His wandering veil eventually landed itself in what could only be described as a break room. Even cult leaders needed coffee and vending machines, it seemed. There were lockers, too, and Dan ran a cursory search for anything interesting or obviously illegal. This, too, produced little to show for his efforts. He swept the rest of the sector, noting a stocked gym with a pool and showers, and a bunk room. It was this final location that caught Dan's interest, as he found someone sitting upright in bed, staring blankly at the wall.

The somewhat broad shoulders indicated a man, and the unnatural stillness was something Dan had only ever seen in the idling Geists at the Andeno house. He immediately opened up a door, only to find himself faced with an almost cookie-cutter priest. The man was handsome, clean-shaven, and light-skinned. His short hair was combed into some kind of swirling pattern that somehow made him look approachable and friendly.

His eyes were vacant, and his mouth hung slightly open. Drool pooled in a corner of his mouth. He was sitting in bed, as upright as one could get in a bunk. The covers were pulled up to his waist, but he was dressed underneath. He wore the dark habit of a Evo Church priest, but seemed completely unaware of his surroundings.

His face... was familiar. Dan knew him from somewhere. Sometime, what felt like long ago. His mind went back to his first few months in this new, frightening world. To a nervous Connor Graham, and a loud Gregoir Pierre-Louise. To a ride-a-long gone wrong, and the first fight for his life. Dan thought back, and he remembered Eddie Charleston. The man who could roofie people with his voice alone, who had once tried to kidnap Gregoir Pierre-Louise, and had wisely fled the aftermath.

What the hell was he doing in the Evo Church, Dan wondered, and why did he look like he'd been lobotomized?