The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 188: Trick Room

Dan reiterated to himself that this was not supposed to be a raid. He accepted an armored vest from Agent Carver, along with a matching helmet. It was his first experience with SPEAR level gear, and he was pleasantly surprised by how the padded interior adjusted itself to his head. The hardened glass visor flickered, and a HUD appeared, automatically highlighting the other members of the not-raid group. Dan glanced around the locker room, taking in his temporary teammates.

Carver had convinced a number of other officers into volunteering for crowd control, swelling their numbers into an even two-dozen. Half that number was relegated to the numerous exits around the Church of Infinite Evolution. They would corral civilians, and catch Charleston if he pulled a runner. Only Dan knew the real state of the man. Eddie Charleston wouldn't be running anywhere without borrowing someone else's legs.

Dan spent some time getting acclimated to his helmet's functions while the actual officers geared up. He was familiar with the basic system, as it was essentially a suped up version of what he'd been trained on for his crisis response license. This kind of equipment was only supplied to volunteers under very rare circumstances, but learning its use had been mandatory. Something Dan was now incredibly grateful for, as asking how to use the fancy equipment he'd been handed would've been a huge blow to the 'competent operator' persona he'd apparently cultivated.

Eventually he worked out the small differences in functionality, just in time for everyone to be loaded up into two armored SUVs and set out for the Evo Church. Dan listened quietly as Agent Carver went over the basics of the plan again. Dan's role in it all was very simple. He would be with Carver, heading right into the heart of the facility. His job was to identify any rooms not on the blueprints, a copy of which was sitting in the corner of his helmet display. If he could find even one, it would be a major inconvenience to the Evo Church. More than one, and they'd risk their tax-exempt status as a religious institution. The D.C. location was headquarters for the entire church; whatever happened here would spiral out across the country. It was entirely possible to cull the entire cult here, root and stem.

This is not a raid, he told himself again, as the truck full of armed and armored men trundled off towards the church. It will be an entirely peaceful operation, and the hundreds of civilians would not be in any danger at all. That's what he told himself, and he resolved to make it true.

It took less than ten minutes to arrive at the church's massive parking lot. The two armored cars pulled right up to the curb outside the gargantuan double doors, and disgorged their contents onto the sidewalk. Civilians and passerby were already reacting. Some stared, star-struck or stunned. Others had cameras out and recording, standing stupidly still while they watched events proceed. The smart ones were running, having taken a single look at the small army before deciding to be elsewhere.

The assembled officers and agents marched up the stone steps towards the Evo Church. Dan's veil was racing ahead of the procession, mapping out the building's entrance and tagging bystanders. At the top of the stairs, half of the force peeled away, moving to encircle the building. Emergency exits were marked on Dan's HUD, waypoint markers placed in their supposed locations. The officers would lock them down, and detain anyone leaving.

Dan's veil swept the security booth that lay right beyond the double doors. He felt three people— now two, as one sprinted out the back and further into the building. One of the remaining pair shifted, and typed something into their console. There was a fat button underneath the security terminal, and the final guard tapped it three times in fast succession.

"They know we're here," Dan transmitted over the squad channel. He received a quick acknowledgement from Agent Carver, and then they were through the doors.

A handful of civilians milled about the front lobby, and reacted to the sudden entrance of armed agents with varying levels of alarm. Most froze or flinched, with one woman throwing both hands into the air while screaming, before turning and fleeing in the opposite direction. Carver gave no order to subdue her. They weren't here for the cultists, but the cult.

Dan's veil finally picked up footsteps approaching, rather than fleeing.

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"Incoming," he warned, and one of the Evo Church's priests rounded the corner at just under a sprint. His long robes flapped against his thighs as he shuffle-ran his way towards the intruders.

"What is the meaning of this!?" he demanded loudly. "This is private property! Where is your warrant!?"

Carver stepped forward to argue with the man, and Dan tuned them out. Instead, he extended his senses across the rest of the church, stretching his veil out like a massive spiderweb. The entire place buzzed like a beehive. The word was spreading, and it quickly became difficult to discern panic from planning. Nobody was shredding files or microwaving servers, so far as he could tell, but there was a definite sense of purpose in many of the church Brothers. Dan tried to keep it all steady in his head, even as he found Charleston's bunk.

The man was still in bed, awake yet vacant. Dan, extremely grateful for the blacked out glass of his helmet, opened up a viewing door into the room. He squinted through the darkness, and confirmed what his veil was telling him. Charleston was there, and he wasn't moving.

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But someone outside was. Light peeked through the bottom of the door, and shadows flickered rapidly across it. Dan probed the gym with his veil, and felt feet hurriedly moving towards the bunk room. He narrowed his portal, and double checked the blueprints. Once again, he confirmed that this bunk room was not in the plans for the building. The shadow underneath the door widened until it blocked out all light, then the latch twisted and opened, and a priest in full regalia stepped inside. He regarded Charleston with a frown, then shut the door. The room plunged back into darkness, and Dan relied on his veil and the dim light from underneath the door crack to see what the priest was doing.

The cultist was... fiddling with the light switch? Dan's veil brushed against an object that was almost certainly a screwdriver. He weaved more thread into the wall, and into the panel that covered the light switch. The man was unscrewing it. He gently removed the panel, set it aside, and started to fiddle with the wiring. Very quickly, the wires were detached. Dan watched in shock as he pulled them out of the wall wholesale, bundled them up, and stuffed them into his robes. He replaced the wall panel and left the room.

Dan had no idea what to make of that.

"We're moving out," Agent Carver said, having finally finished arguing with the priest in the lobby. The man was red faced with fury, but Carver was having none of it. She made a hand gesture and a series of lights flashed across Dan's HUD. Orders, he presumed, not that he could make heads or tails of it. His squad mates responded immediately, paired up into their pre-assigned groups, and started to fan out across the massive circular building.

"Newman, with me," Carver ordered, and Dan obediently followed. Paired up like this, it was obvious they weren't expecting any real trouble. Dan wasn't, either, but the reality of the situation did nothing to soothe his paranoia.

They rounded a bend, then beelined for what the blueprints marked as a staff area. The priest followed behind them, now on the phone and muttering curses under his breath. When they approached the door, the robed cultist scurried forward to unlock it.

"This really is unnecessary," he said, as he swung open the door. "If you'd just provide us with his name, we'd be happy to search our register."

"He goes by Edict," Carver said, brushing past the man and nearly toppling him over. "I assume even you people wouldn't hire someone going by a villainous alias."

"Of course not!" the priest squawked, following behind them. "He would have given us a name!"

Dan noted that his phone was still clutched in his hand, and the call was active. He quickly mentioned it to Carver, and she pinged an acknowledgement.

"We don't know what name he gave you," Carver said, which wasn't even a lie.

"In that case, we could bring out all of our newest hires," the priest offered, as they stepped into a small break room. There were a handful of staff sitting down, having lunch. Another priest was there, in his robes, and he regarded Dan and Carver with open disdain.

"We don't know how long he's been here," Carver deflected. "Besides, this man is dangerous. It's best for us to search for him ourselves."

Dan's veil fanned out across the adjoining rooms. He checked the blueprints, and noted they were all present and accounted for. He spread out his senses, reconfirming Charleston's location and— There was another person in his room. Dan opened another portal inside his helmet.

"If he's as dangerous as you claim, you should've been more circumspect!" the priest exclaimed. "You've put our flock in danger, acting like this. If this man is really here, then you've given him more than enough hostages to choose from!"

Inside Charleston's bunk room, a new man was tapping at the walls. He wasn't in priest garb, but rather the simple blue jumpsuit of a janitor. Dan watched curiously as, with every tap, a small flash of gold left his finger and sunk into the walls. Dan sent threads darting across the marked surface, but quickly ran into a problem.

"Your church is sheltering him," Carver pointed out. "Did you expect us to ignore the presence of a dangerous criminal among all these civilians?"

Dan's veil pressed against the wall, and stopped. There was something there. He could feel it, a barrier of some kind. Something alive, yet not. It was difficult to put into words, but it felt similar to the effects of Madison's power. There was an energy in the walls that his veil could sense, an extension of someone else, with just enough lingering consciousness to register to Dan's senses. He could pierce it, with some effort, but didn't bother. His viewing portal was functioning just fine, which meant this was a physical barrier. His doors opened through the Gap, and he could clearly see inside the room.

Carver opened the door to an office, glancing quickly around. There were papers left out on the desk inside, and she stepped over to look at them. The priest hurriedly picked them up, exclaiming, "This man is obviously not a piece of paper, Agent Carver!"

The janitor finished tapping the walls, and now a thin layer of gold wrapped around them like tin foil. He opened the door, and stepped outside. Dan heard a final tap on the wood outside, then watched as the man's shadow stepped back and away. Dan opened a new door outside the bunk room, hoping to get a clearer view of the janitor's face, but paused as he took in the new sight.

Where the door to the bunk room once sat, there was nothing. Just a wall, where the showers ended. He probed it with his veil, and was gently rebuffed by the same energy he'd felt before. Dan quickly opened a door inside the room, and was relieved when he realized he could. Light from outside still peeked in through the door crack. Just an illusion, then, but a damned good one.

Carver prodded him, and Dan came back to the present.

"We're moving," she said, and motioned him onward. Dan scrambled to keep up, pushing his multi-tasking to the limit as he tried to stay aware of his surroundings, the janitor, and Agent Carver all at the same time. He sent his veil out to the next set of rooms on the map, fanning across and counting bodies. It was only when it crashed against another barrier that Dan realized what should have been obvious to him.

There wasn't just the one janitor, creating just the one hidden room. This place had more secrets than just Eddie Charleston, and one of them appeared to be less than fifty feet away.