Hurricane #29: The Agent (Patreon)

“So what the hell did you guys give her?” Sarah gestured at Serrano, who lolled drunkenly in the back seat with her.

Ward sat in the front seat, pressing a cloth to the wound on her leg. “They gave her a quick-acting sedative.” She put a slight but unmissable emphasis on they. “Frankly, I’m surprised she’s not unconscious. But she should recover fully soon.”

“And when she does, what do we tell her to keep her from stomping you flat?” Sarah waved a hand. “Not that I couldn’t shrink and eat you right now, and not that Mrs. Webb apparently can’t yeet you straight into the fucking sun.”

“Superhero,” Serrano mumbled.

“I’m a giantess. Still. I told Ms. Layotl there are different ways to change one’s size, and some are more difficult than others. I chose a particularly unusual combination of spells. So, I’m still my normal size, mass, and strength, but I’m manifesting on this scale, with magic keeping that size, mass, and strength in check. But I can call on them selectively.”

“So when you stomped in the coffee shop, you were stomping with the force of a giantess.” Sarah sounded approving. Ward’s ears flattened.

“Yes. And that’s how I could pick up the sedan.” She focused on the vixen. “Although I’ll wait until we’re on campus and I’m back to giant size to yeet you into the sun.”

Ward looked away, ears still flat.

“You’re not talking,” Sarah said after a few seconds.

“In the twenty-four hours since you and your storm god friend threatened me, an otherworldly client turned against me, my employment was abruptly terminated, and I’ve exchanged fire with my former team, likely killing two of them and being shot myself. All because I asked the wrong person the wrong question, trying to find out if you two could possibly be right.” The vixen turned and looked at Sarah, expression flat. “And now I’ve been kidnapped by a wolf who’s threatened to eat me and a mouse who’s threatened to throw me into the sun. So no. I’m not feeling very chatty.”

“If you’d prefer a touch of irony, I could be the one who threatens to eat you,” Webb said dryly.

“Hot,” Serrano mumbled.

Webb blinked in confusion, then blushed in her ears. Ward stared at the car roof.

Sarah sighed. “Come on, Agent Ward. It doesn’t sound like you have anything to lose at this point by helping us.”

“I’ve lost everything by merely considering helping you,” she snapped, finally sounding agitated. Then she rubbed her face, sighing. “I’d hoped to get to the hotel before you did and intercept you. I didn’t know exactly what my team—former team—was planning. I just knew there had to be something.” She gestured at Serrano. “I hadn’t been cut out of the loop yet when we were told yesterday that drugging the coyote here makes it hard for her to use her powers. But I don’t know what they wanted to grab her for.”

“Told by whom?”

“Our contact with Sark. Edward Lewis.” She snorted. “‘Sergeant’ Edward Lewis.”

Serrano tried to sit up, baring her teeth. “Fucking Sergeant Eddie.” She winced, then slid back down. “When does this shit wear off.”

Ward glanced at her wristwatch. “It’ll start fading in about ten more minutes.” As they turned onto the campus’s main road, she glanced out the window, eyes widening and ears folding back. “Three Lords.”

“Feeling small?” Sarah grinned toothily.

Webb pulled into the library’s parking lot. “Sarah, could you help Serrano? Agent Ward, get out, but just stay by the car.”

Sarah nodded, lifting the coyote back out of the sedan. The vixen stepped out, keeping her weight off her injured leg and looking wary.

Ward stepped away from the car, then returned to her normal size, a blast of displaced air rocking the vehicle and making both the wolf and vixen stagger.

“All right.” She leaned over and reached for Ward. The vixen’s eyes got even wider and she started to back away, but didn’t get very far before being scooped up. “Why don’t you shift as well, Ms. Wylde, and bring Ms. Layotl in with us this way?”

“Sure.” Sarah guided Serrano to a sitting position on the pavement, then shifted up, too, gently picking the coyote up.

As the mouse and the now-giant wolf walked toward the library’s giant-scale entrance, Webb looked down at the vixen. “What question did you ask?”

Ward looked up blankly from the mouse’s hand, ears pinned back.

“You said you asked the wrong person the wrong question. What was the question?”

“How to harden the security of the cross-dimensional conduits being used to drain the coyote of her powers.”

They’d reached the library entrance; Sarah opened the door, holding it for Webb. The mouse nodded her thanks, and kept speaking. “That sounds like the diametric opposite of the information Ms. Wylde asked you for.”

Sarah shook her head, following them into the building. “It was the right question to ask if she didn’t want to raise suspicion. Tell them the truth—that Serrano’s actively trying to break the connection Sark has to her. If you learn what needs to be hardened, you learn what has weaknesses.”

Ward stopped gawking at the building and gave Sarah a nod. “Exactly.”

“Of course, it’s also what you’d ask if you wanted to stop us.”

“The best evidence I can offer in my defense is that I’m here. And that the people who tried to abduct Layotl also tried to kill me.”

“They shot you,” Webb corrected, “but nowhere near fatally. For all we know, this is just part of an elaborately staged ruse.” The librarian had reached her desk, and set the vixen down on it, a couple of yards from where Sarah placed Serrano. Then she took her seat, resting her elbows to either side of the former agent and lacing her hands together in the air. “You also haven’t provided actual information.”

“Damn straight,” Serrano muttered, rubbing her forehead.

Ward swallowed, then stood up, looking around the library, then back up at the mouse, who seemed to leave her just as nonplussed than the faerie wolf. “This is what I know. I asked Lewis that question, and he became upset. He said he’d have to contact Sark directly and call me back. It took him hours to do so, and when he did, he said they’d decided to take a new direction in light of this information, no longer focusing on Layotl, and my company’s services were no longer required.”

Sarah groaned. “And that’s it?”

“That’s all that he said to me, yes. What he said to the company’s home office was that Sark wanted me, specifically, off this job because I’d been compromised.” She looked up at the wolf. “Assuming neither of you leaked something to the wrong person, that means Lewis or someone else working for Sark pressed the members of my team individually to get someone to suggest that I was a double agent.”

“Which you were.”

“The irony is that I hadn’t decided on that yet. I had little reason to trust two giant murderous monsters who were trying to coerce me into working against my client.” She crossed her arms. “My plan had been to get as much of a reading on Lewis’s honesty as I could before deciding to commit to your plan. I suppose I’ve gotten a definitive answer on that now.”

Webb hmmed. “You said ‘that’s it,’ but ‘no longer focusing on Layotl’ strikes me as significant, Ms. Wylde.”

“Or it was just bullshit to stall Ward here.”

“Maybe,” Ward said. “But the terrifying mouse might be correct.”

“They were literally just trying to kidnap Serrano!”

The mouse readjusted her glasses. “I’m not terrifying, I’m a librarian.”

The vixen just stared flatly up at her, silent for several seconds before elaborating. “Since the day we were hired, the entire operation focused on Serrano Layotl.” She gestured to the coyote. "Installing surveillance equipment. Installing…frankly, I have no idea what some of that equipment was. Reporting on her movements. Monitoring measurements that appeared to relate to both massive energy output and meteorological conditions, both localized on her.

“So, yes, it’s absolutely possible that they’re lying about her no longer being of interest. But Lewis—and, by extension, Sark—have been increasingly concerned about her growing ability to use her powers rather than just passively conduct whatever energy powers them. If I were in their position, I’d devote substantial resources to finding a way to remove her from the equation. Take power without having to go through her. Cut her off before she grows too powerful to stop.”

“Okay, that makes sense as a plan, but…” Sarah shook her head. “Either they’ve succeeded or they haven’t. Asking a question they didn’t want to answer can’t be the deciding factor.”

“It could be if they’re very close to success and willing to take a chance. What little I know about Sark tells me that he’s impulsive enough to change big plans on the spur of the moment.”

“So if they don’t need Serrano, why grab her?”

“Because maybe he’s not crazy enough…” The coyote staggered to her paws, winced, and took a deep breath. She looked hung over. “Not crazy enough to get rid of me if he’s not sure that he doesn’t need me. What I want to know is…mmf.” She rubbed her forehead, then walked to Ward and stabbed a finger in the air at her accusingly. “How the fuck they turned off my powers long enough to drug me in the first place.”

Ward looked back at her. “To the best of my knowledge, Ms. Layotl, you have that backwards. They drugged you to turn off your powers.”

“But—no.” Serrano’s head had started to clear through the power of sheer frustration. “How?” She pointed at Sarah. “She’s a fucking faerie warrior princess or—”

“Not a princess.”

“—or whatever, and every time she tried to kill me, my powers intervened to save me without me even knowing I had powers. It’s like the original storm goddess was intervening to save me.”

“Which is why we were ordered to never directly attack you—it would guarantee we would effectively be fighting that goddess. But we’ve also been told that no matter how much it appears to the contrary, you remain mortal. You have the power of a goddess to call on, but you are not a goddess yourself.”

“So if I get roofied, I can just be killed like anyone.” Serrano ran a hand through her hair. “So what, they planned to just keep me drugged constantly until they were told they didn’t need me, then…” She drew a finger across her throat.

“I don’t know. But it seems likely.”

She crossed her arms. “So did you find out anything that can help us? Any silver lining to this shit sandwich?”

“That’s a mixed metaphor,” Mrs. Webb murmured.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Layotl. I don’t have much.”

Sarah looked at her. “That means you have something.”

Ward nodded after a moment. “I have a location.”