Chapter Text
From the very first moment she’d stepped into Trench’s office and felt the weight of the Service Weapon slot home in her hand, Jesse Faden had known this world – the Federal Bureau of Control, the Oldest House, the fuzzy places where they both overlapped and split – wouldn’t rest until it had taken its measure of her. She hadn’t been wrong; as Director of the FBC, not a day went by where her skills weren’t put to the test, be they physical, cognitive, emotional, parautilitarian, logistical, managerial, gastronomical, olfactory…
Still, this seemed like a bit much, what she was doing in the Astral Plane. Bringing down the Hiss had been one thing, but 20 Questions? A woman had limits!
“There’s…a…problem,” she said, speaking slowly in an attempt to keep her dwindling patience in check. It was a losing battle.
Looming stories over her, its outline only barely visible against the starless darkness of the Astral Plane, the Former stared. And stared. And, wouldn’t you know it, stared some more before its eye rotated, narrowing to a spotlight. It answered her the only way it knew how: cryptically.
< Many @#$! Escape @#$@# Lost >
It was the closest to actual usable information she’d gotten in the past hour.
A depressing thought.
Jesse sat at the edge of the marble slab, her legs crossed and her elbows digging into her knees, looking more than slightly ridiculous, done up as she was in her sleek navy suit and swept-back hair – what she usually thought of as her CEO costume. In that moment, she felt less like the leader of a high-powered interdimensional institution functioning on the fringes of society and more like, uh…hmm. A babysitter, maybe? An underpaid and overworked babysitter. Beleaguered, one could say, left alone with the world’s biggest (and, credit where credit was due, most unnerving) toddler.
When the radio static whalesong in her head didn’t immediately pick up again, she took a breath and straightened. “Okay. So you’re…lost. And you need my help to escape. Is that it?”
Silence. Above her, the Former continued to stare, its massive body gently swaying like a stalk of wheat in a gentle breeze. A vaguely squid-shaped stalk of wheat. With one giant eye. That glowed.
< No >
She groaned aloud, throwing her hands in the air before flopping onto the marble path, spreadeagled and exasperated. “Can I get a lifeline? A phone-a-friend? Maybe there’s someone in HR who can translate Astral thought-garble to English.” Jesse paused. “Wait…do we have an HR department? We…we probably need one of those. I mean…all considering.”
That was as far as she got before the Former was over her again, its unknowable form bending at some invisible joint to hang in the air just above her.
“Ah! I…oh, hi there.”
Since handling the Arctic Queen and Flamingo – a series of words most people would never think to string together – she hadn’t seen any kind of aggression or hostility from the Former, but man, it was big. Just really, really big, and really, really unsettling to look at, up close and personal like that.
Its eye rotated again, the blinding spotlight mellowing, diffusing. Probably that was some random tic of its anatomy; Jesse chose to interpret it as something more friendly in nature. After all, what said ‘friendship’ more clearly than choosing not to scorch someone’s retinas out?
< Power @#$@#$!@ Read? >
That one she almost understood. “Knowledge is power. Right on.”
< Artifact @#$ Escape @#$@# Werewolf @#$@#$@! Summer Camp >
…that one, she did not.
Carefully, going to great pains not to make any sudden moves (or headbutt its all-seeing eye-beam…thing), Jesse sat back up. “I-I’m sorry. ‘Werewolf summer camp?’ Werewolf summer camp. I don’t think I follow. At all.”
The Former blinked, and her hands went up to massage her temples. This had gone on for way too long already. No doubt there was a stack of files waiting for her on her desk, gathering dust, and woe betide her if the Board had tried to call while she was here whittling the hours away chatting with its least favorite extradimensional entity.
“I…okay,” she began again, determined this time around. “There is a problem. The problem is…something is…lost? Or escaped. We good so far?” She turned her face up to the Former’s light, and when it didn’t correct her, pressed on. “I’ll take it. So something is lost, or…not where it should be. And it’s an artif – wait, an Altered Item? There’s an Altered Item loose?”
Round and round went the eye, intensifying the light falling over her.
< Repeating @#$ Obvious @#$@#$! Duh >
“Wow, unnecessary.” Jesse frowned into middle-space, thinking.
An Altered Item loose in the House wasn’t unheard of, and it was definitely something that could cause problems if left unattended for too long, but try as she might, she couldn’t remember any instance where that sort of thing had been brought to her attention by anyone other than another Bureau employee – usually Langston, managing to look somehow sheepish and impatient all in one. If the Former had taken notice of it…
“So there’s an Altered Item out there. Somewhere. And it’s powerful. And it’s, um…” Yeah, no, she had nothing. “It’s got something to do with both werewolves…aaand summer camps.”
After a moment, the Former pulled back from her, reaching its full height once more.
< Excite @#$@#$!@#! Recommend @#$! Butterpop >
Oh, she was going to look into the HR thing for sure.
This had to count as overtime.
***
Shocking a grand total of, uh, no one, Jesse wasn’t any closer to figuring out what sort of Altered Item ‘werewolf summer camp’ might’ve been referring to, even after making her way back into the Executive sector. Oh, and her own dimension. (It just took a little longer to get to Executive sometimes, that was all.)
She ran another salvo of ideas past Polaris, feeling her reject thought after thought: A tent that turns into a bigger tent under the full moon? A friendship bracelet that bites whoever’s wearing it and turns you into bffs whether you like it or not? A bottle of sunscreen that makes you sprout fur? A tent that turns into a SMALLER tent under the full m – no? After a particularly exasperated twinkle, Jesse snickered to herself, holding her hands up in defense. Hey, that’s the best I got! Don’t like it? You start making suggestions.
Nothing.
Mhm. So let’s keep our eyes peeled for suspicious tents until something better comes along. Sound like a plan?
Since the height of the Hiss invasion, the Executive lobby had seen quite a transformation – the whole House had, really, but as Director, Jesse found herself treading these halls more than the others, and so the calm that had descended over them like a soft woolen blanket on a chilly autumn evening felt the most obvious. Depending on where you stood, the sounds that filled the sector were quiet chatter and rustling papers or the practiced strokes of fingers on typewriter keys and bubbling water coolers, and while sure, those formed their own sort of rhythm, it was a world apart from the disjointed Hiss chanting that had once echoed there.
She stood appreciating that difference for a moment, answering a few “Morning, Director”s with a tight smile and a tighter nod, then caught sight of a friendly face and made her way over to him instead.
“Arish! Hey, weird question for you.”
Simon Arish, the Bureau’s de facto Head of Security, glanced away from whatever schematics he’d been looking over and cracked a sideways smile when he saw her approaching. “A weird question, huh? In this place? Eh, I dunno Faden, I’m not sure I buy it.” Chuckling, he pushed his work aside, giving her his attention more fully. He slid his thumbs into the lower straps of his HRA as if it was some sort of tactical vest. In a way, she guessed it sort of was. “But hey, I’ll give it a shot. What’s going on?”
“Do we have an HR department somewhere?”
“Haunted Relics? Oh yeah, that’s down in – ”
“I – no. No. Human Resources. You know…hiring? Firing? Payroll? Sick days?” She spread her arms plaintively. “HR?”
His brow furrowed. Like, considerably. Even before he opened his mouth, Jesse knew what his answer was going to be. She didn’t interrupt him, though; nope, watching him struggle to remember who (if anyone) signed his paychecks (if he’d ever actually gotten one) was just a little too much fun.
His gaze went distant. He touched his tongue to the tip of an eyetooth. “…we should…probably have one of those.”
Jesse snorted, leaning against his table. “Probably. I guess that’s something else to add to the to-do list.”
“That old thing? How many pages you up to now? Fifty? Sixty?”
“Last time I checked? Seven hundred and twenty-three.”
He let out a low whistle, shaking his head. “The Director’s work is never done.”
“Don’t I know it.” Behind her eyes, Polaris flashed, and suddenly…something occurred to her. “Hey. So. Second weird question for you.”
“No, I don’t have recommendations for a hypothetical Head of HR. Ask me, none of us should be, y’know, interacting with that many people in a day. Human ones, anyway.”
She smiled, but it was halfhearted. At best. There was an odd feeling growing in her chest – or was it her solar plexus? It was an old friend, that feeling; a harbinger of strangeness on the horizon. Something paranatural was in the air, and all at once it seemed terribly coincidental that Arish would be the first person she’d run into after her ‘conversation’ with the Former.
“I know it’s sort of a sore subject, but…that Altered World Event you looked into back when you were a Ranger…”
A certain tightness came over his happy-go-lucky body language, but to his credit, Arish didn’t let it reach his face. Not yet, anyway. “Altered Item, actually, but yeah. What about it?”
“You said you guys got called out there because of, um, werewolves, am I remembering that right?”
“That was the rumor.”
He turned back to his schematics and she let him. No doubt she was bringing up all sorts of complicated feelings about his old crew, especially considering everything that had gone down during the invasion…but the coincidence was just too much. It was almost – ugh, what was the word Emily used in situations like this? – ah, right, synchronous.
Clearing his throat, Arish continued. “That was the rumor, yeah. Only, when we got there, there weren’t any actual werewolves. It was just some weird gravitational flux that kicked into high gear on full moons. Had the locals spooked. Understandably spooked, I’ll add. It was a real freaky situation from top to bottom.”
“Yeah, I remember you saying that too. It…okay. Stick with me here for a second. Where you tracked that Altered Item to, the place upstate, it didn’t happen to be a, uh, summer camp, did it?”
Again, she knew his answer by his face alone. “What? No. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t. That’s your third weird question, by the way – don’t think I’m not keeping track! You’re running up quite the tab.”
She hummed, disappointed. It had felt like a solid lead to follow. Ah, but she should’ve known better: things were never that easy where the Bureau was involved.
“Sorry, I got a – ” she paused, grimacing inwardly, “ – let’s call it a tip, about an Altered Item that may or may not be wreaking havoc somewhere in here. Well, an Altered Item that may or may not exist, period. It wasn’t really a lot to go on.”
“But it has to do with werewolves.”
“And summer camps.”
“Oh, yeah, obviously. The ideal combination.” Arish looked up again, narrowing his eyes as he searched her face for a punchline. A punchline, he soon saw, that did not exist. “You’re serious. What, like a, like a tent that grows teeth or something?”
Ooh, she thought towards Polaris, not without a fair bit of delight, see? My tent theory’s not that far-fetched!
Aloud, she chuckled, “Something like that. Guess I’ll find out one way or another. I always do.”
“The true Bureau motto. But hey, look on the bright side! Whenever you do find yourself crossing paths with…whatever, you already know someone with the silver bullet hookup.” He gave his chest, and the pouch tucked beneath his uniform, a pat to remind her of the good luck charms he and his Ranger friends had carried after that mission. A silver bullet apiece. All his, now.
“I appreciate it. But between you and me, I’m not even sure there’s a – ”
And that’s when the gunshots rang out.
“ – never mind.”
Still jumpy from the Hiss, the entire sector seemed to react as one. The background chatter cut short, the ambient sounds of working stopped, and, even before they knew what was happening, Jesse and Arish were armed and ready for whatever came next.
The gunfire grew louder – closer – before a door burst off its hinges and it was right out in the open.
Jesse watched the panicked Ranger stagger out of the Jukebox room of all places, face pale and finger squeezing off round after round at…something. They turned, maybe to reload, maybe to look for backup, and that was it. Their biggest mistake. Arish didn’t even have enough time to yell, “Get down!” before it happened.
Something – something thick, something heavy, something indisputably alive – came flying out from the Jukebox room hot on the Ranger’s heels. It caught them in the back of the head, sending them toppling onto the floor, and Jesse couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Literally could not believe it, despite the thing being so clearly lit and her being so close to it.
It…it was…
Seriously?
Beside her, Arish lowered his gun. “Is that a book?” he asked, and then let out a decidedly unprofessional yell as it launched itself at him. He narrowly avoided being taken down like the Ranger, ducking out of the way just in time. “Yeah,” he said a second later, already recovered, “that’s a book. Hey, good news! Think we found your Altered Item.”
“Sure seems that way!”
The Service Weapon was less an object than an extension of herself; Jesse barely needed to aim, she just pointed the gun at the book and let loose, knocking it off its course with a hail of what she’d come to think of as not-bullets. What did the Service Weapon fire? Was it energy? Paranatural matter? Some sort of placebo ammunition? Heck if she knew, but the book didn’t seem to appreciate it.
She thought.
It was sort of difficult to tell what it was feeling, considering it, uh, it was a book. It didn’t have eyes, or a mouth, or…any features at all, as far as she could see. Again, probably because it was a book. Still, Jesse could feel it glaring at her as it whirled in midair, changing its trajectory to launch itself right at her face. As it cut through the air, its pages rustled, making a noise strangely close to –
No. No way. That…that wasn’t happening.
She kicked off from the ground to avoid it colliding with her, half hovering and half strafing to snap back around and hit it with another flurry of shots. Once upon a time, she might’ve stopped and boggled at the thought of fighting a household object with deadly force, but time had made her wiser – quite literally, too. She’d taken one too many antique clocks to the head after that business with the Anchor, so she wasn’t taking any chances here.
“I’ve heard of not being able to put a good book down, but this is ridiculous! Damn thing isn’t flinching,” Arish snapped, firing off a few well-placed shots of his own. The book shuddered, then flipped end-over-end before catching itself, spiraling through the air.
Tell me something I don’t know! she thought, then called back, “It probably needs some kind of ritual! We’re not going to get very far if we don’t know – whoa!” At the very last second, she rolled out of its path, watching as the encyclopedia-sized nightmare shot off towards the second floor. A few gathered Agents gasped, scattering as the book slammed into the side of the stairs and tumbled onto its side. It flopped open, writhing in frustration, and there was that noise again, the one that sounded suspiciously (and impossibly) like growling.
“Books don’t normally do that. Right? Not a big reader in my spare time, but I can’t shake the feeling that most books probably don’t do that.”
The book shot into the air with a snarl, whirling up and up and up towards the ceiling before spreading its covers wide and howling.
Like a, uh…
Like a…
Well.
Jesse turned to Arish.
He stared at the book for all of a second, and then promptly nodded as if to say ‘Yeah, okay, fair enough,’ and began tugging the pouch of bullets out from under his uniform. “Answers the werewolf part of this mystery, I guess,” he muttered. He fought with the weight of his HRA, clearly having trouble dislodging the bullets from under it, and as he glanced down – just for an instant, just for that one insignificant heartbeat – the book whirled on him.
“Watch o – ” was all Jesse had time to say. Arish was down a second later, trying to force some room between himself and the Altered Item, his off-hand going up instinctively. She blinked and the sleeve of his uniform was in tatters, the dark fabric growing darker with spilled blood, and without thinking, she grabbed the book by the back cover, her stomach twisting as she felt it pulse with a heartbeat of its own, felt muscles rippling just beneath its leather binding.
One of these days, she was going to get used to Altered Items. Even the weird ones.
She hoped.
With all her might, Jesse tore the growling, snarling thing off of Arish’s arm, flinging it away from them. It went soaring through the air like an angry frisbee, gnashing its pages in a display every bit as surreal as it was unpleasant.
“Are you okay?” she asked, but he was already moving again, yanking the pouch out from under his shirt, working it open, reaching for bullets. The whole Security crew, she’d since learned, was made of sterner stuff, so she let him be, buying him time to load his weapon and get his shot.
When she turned around to track the book again, she found it on top of the Ranger it had toppled before, its pages forming some sort of bizarre rudimentary mouth as it tore into their uniform as well, shredding layers of fabric to try and find skin. All the while, it snuffled and snapped, making noises with vocal cords it shouldn’t have had in the first place, and Jesse…Jesse didn’t care for that.
The Ranger, judging by their flailing and also their screaming, felt similarly.
Acting on instinct alone, she dropped the Service Weapon (and its nonexistent bullets), reaching out with her mind to grab onto it once more, just at a safer distance this time. Normally she thought of the skill as telekinesis, but in that moment, as she felt the Altered Item’s sinewy strength reeling against her metaphysical grip, what occurred to her was the name the Board had given it: Launch. There came the sound of ripping fabric as she flung the awful thing off of the Ranger, sending it flying back out of the main area and into the room where the Jukebox was kept – the room it had come from.
Arish was up, his gun cocked. “Werebook…” she heard him mutter, and then he was running for the Jukebox, her close behind, and things moved so quickly after that, they seemed to come in flashes.
Something moved in the Jukebox’s dim light.
Jesse reacted, freezing it in midair before it could reach them.
There was a blinding flash.
A pop so loud it knocked her back a step.
The book threw itself open wide, howling like a wounded animal.
And then it dropped, motionless and unimpressive, a shiny silver spot gleaming in its spine.
Jesse didn’t let herself exhale until her ears had stopped ringing; by then, Arish had already circled the Altered Item, keeping his gun leveled at it as he prodded one of its covers with the side of his shoe. It wasn’t doing a lot of moving, though – or any – and while she guessed it could’ve been playing possum, it really didn’t look that way.
“Think it’s down,” Arish said, still clearly hesitant to take his eyes off it. He spared his wounded arm a brief glance, and that appeared to break the spell; moving as if being graded in a field exercise, he holstered his weapon, clipped it, then bent and retrieved the book, sure to keep its covers clamped together with his palms. His expression faltered, but before she could ask, he turned the front cover towards her.
“…The Quarry,” she read aloud, feeling her eyebrows draw together.
“Guess we don’t have to sit around wondering where it came from.” To punctuate his point, Arish shut the door to the Jukebox’s containment cell with his elbow, giving the book one final squeeze before handing it off to her. “Not that it matters where it started out, if you ask me. This has gotta be Containment’s fault, right? Letting something like this slip out through the cracks?”
She took the book, trying not to let her earlier disgust show. Much to her relief, there were no signs of life coming off it now, no hint that, only a minute ago, it had been flying around, adding fashionable wear-and-tear to Agents’ uniforms. It felt like any other hardcover book might’ve – heavy, sedentary, maybe a little warm from Arish’s hands, but that was it.
“It does seem like something you might expect to see behind a pane of glass up there, doesn’t it.” Her cheeks puffed with a tired breath. “I’ll bet someone’s missing you, huh, The Quarry, written by…hmmm. I’m not seeing an author anywhere.” After a moment of flipping through the book’s front matter, she remembered herself, snapping back into the here and now. “You should go down to Medical, get that looked at.”
“Yeah, can’t wait for that conversation. ‘Hey, what’s the protocol for getting bitten by a book? Is that a rabies shot or a band-aid kind of deal?’”
She smiled, finding it came quite naturally now that she had an answer to the Former’s circuitous warning. “Do we have a protocol for papercuts?”
“Paranatural ones, sure – knew a guy in Maintenance once who caught something from an instructional pamphlet. Spoke in step-by-step guides for a month before it wore off.”
Jesse glanced up from The Quarry, tucking it tightly under her arm as she watched Arish roll his sleeve up to examine his own. “…you’re making that up.”
His eyebrows rose and lowered, and a corner of his mouth quirked, but he refused to laugh outright. “Around this place? You just never know, do you?” He flashed her a wry smile before sighing, giving in to the inevitable. “But yeah, you’re right, I should get this looked at. Rinsed out, at least. If you’re taking that back to Containment, do me a favor, would you? Give Langston hell for me. This was not how I intended to start my week.”
“Tell me about it. I’ll be sure to let him know.”
“Oh, he’s gonna know one way or another, believe you me. Because right after Medical gives me the okay, I’m heading straight to HR to report this.”
In the still silence of the Jukebox room, the snort that escaped her seemed much, much louder than she’d meant for it to be. “Uh huh. Good luck. Let me know if you find them.”
“Trust me, you’ll know.” Snickering, Arish held the door open for her (using his uninjured arm, of course), waiting for her to step out first before following. As their paths split, he called after her, “Good looking out, Faden. And hey, I’ve got a few more bullets where that one came from, so if that thing starts acting up again, you know where I’ll be!”
She smiled, walking past the scene of the strange attack. A few of the Agents who’d been watching from afar had helped the Ranger hobble off to the stairs, and while their uniform would certainly never recover, they themselves looked no worse for wear. Shaken, sure, confused, definitely, but they didn’t even seem to be bleeding. All par for the course when working with the Bureau.
As she’d done a thousand times before, Jesse stepped into the Control Point, feeling the Oldest House’s strange, ambient energy tug at her with its static-electricity-fingers. The trip to Containment wouldn’t take long, but her curiosity was piqued. In no particular rush, she opened the book again, scanning its pages as she flipped through.
“The werewolf part, I get,” she murmured to herself, pursing her lips with each line she skimmed. “But summer camp? What could this possibly have to do with – oh. Oh, okay.”
The trip to Containment definitely wouldn’t take that long, she reminded herself. If she wanted to stand there and read a chapter or two about camp counselors getting chased around under the full moon, well…that was her prerogative.
The Former had recommended it to her, after all. It would’ve been rude not to read it.