“Could it be the magical form of an RED?” I asked into the silence of his hesitation.
“Possibly,” Rick said. “We have to at least consider it.”
An RED was a radiological exposure device, sometimes called a hidden sealed source. It was a weapon of mass destruction used for terrorism, a device constructed of, or containing, radioactive material. Its purpose was to expose people to radiation without their knowledge. The magical version was called an MED, a magical exposure device. MEDs were postulated weapons. They would be an active or passive working capable of spreading directed and shaped magical energies over a wide area, affecting anyone in the vicinity with a black-magic, curse-based spell-weapon. The working would then spread, just like a plague. Contamination of the populace by terrorists for political aims. But as T. Laine had said, magic didn’t work that way, which was why an MED was only a postulated weapon. However, there was a macabre desire among PsyLED agents to be the first to discover one.
I said, “I thought the dancer and the deep presence were responsible for the psysitope readings, whether it was something they were doing or something emanating from them. No one thinks that’s the case?”
Rick said, “We don’t have enough evidence to rule out anything. We have to consider an MED and the possibility of a weaponized working.”
Tandy said, “Back at the accident site, I collected evidence. Rick called PsyCSI and told them they had a transport truck full of contaminated deer on the way.”
“I’ll bet they were delirious with joy,” T. Laine said.
“Not so much,” Rick said with an amused tightening of his lips. “They’ll be even happier with your decomposing geese. In the morning, Occam and Tandy, follow the psysitope trail of the deer. When you find the origination point, do not enter. Call T. Laine and...” He looked at me. “Can you read again?”
“Yes. But let’s keep it short, okay?”
“T. Laine and Nell will meet you at whatever location. I also want detailed psysitope readings and evidence collecting if possible. So far no humans are contaminated. We want to contain this situation and apprehend the suspects, assuming that there are some. Meeting adjourned. Oh. Nell.”
I looked back at Rick.
“Keep your hands out of the grass and away from the trees.”
“Yes, boss,” I said.
“Go home, people. Get some sleep. Nell, you staying here?”
“Yes, she is,” JoJo said.
“I guess I am. Thanks,” I added to JoJo.
FOUR
Things were more normal to me the next morning at HQ, maybe because it was my second day, maybe because my life had been turned upside down so many times in the last few months thatoddmeantordinary. Or maybe because I went in the door and smelled Mickey D’s breakfast. Bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits, hotcakes with syrup, those little ovals of potato fries. My hostess had fixed smoothies made of spinach, apples, avocado, and mango. I liked all the foods blended together in the glass, and it was green, my favorite food group, but I was used to protein and carbs for breakfast, a high-calorie meal for a farm woman. I had chowed down on the smoothie, but it wasn’t enough, so the high fat and carb content of the smells made my stomach growl with hunger. And coffee. By all that was holy,coffee. I poured a cup and grabbed a Mickey D’s biscuit on the way to my desk.
Occam and Tandy were already in the field, back at the site where the deer had died, tracking with the smaller, handheld psy-meters. Pecking with two fingers, I completed my reports from yesterday and the equipment paperwork for my P 1.0. I also started the request for a government vehicle. Then I worked on the files of paperwork that had come in via e-mail overnight. Working for the government meant enough paperwork to fill a warehouse every week. Or maybe fill up the iCloud.
When I had the required papers filled out and my reports turned in, and had scanned all the reports that I had missed while I was out cold yesterday, I pulled up the case sat map, or CSM, an interactive satellite map set aside for cases such as this. I was pretty sure the unit had had one on the last case, when I was a consultant, but I’d had no security clearance to speak of then, and I had never seen it. This CSM had the locations of the pond and the deer site and the site where Occam andTandy had abandoned the search for the origination site of the deer’s paranormal readings.
The deer had meandered through the woods, a long way from where they ended up, which was strange, as herds of deer meant does, and they usually kept to familiar locations, places where water was, and where they had already found grazing areas and grassy spots to bed down at night. Except in rut season. Which it was, but... herds didn’t run. Only does in heat, chased by bucks to win mating rights, ran.
I marked the site of the deer killings on twenty-five west, then the site where the guys had abandoned the search, four miles away on foot, but only about two as the crow flew. And from there, only a few miles to the pond. Had the deer drunk from the pond?
No one wanted this case to be an MED. MEDs were nightmares for law enforcement, something dreamed up by fiction writers at a think tank in Washington, DC, one created after 9/11 when it was discovered that thriller writers had already come up with scenarios like the bombing of the twin towers. Since then, there had been several possible MEDs but it had been impossible to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the magical events were remotely detonated or equipped with magical timed detonation spells. None of the possible MEDs I had studied resulted in slow, encroaching contamination of wildlife or water sources.
I pulled up photos of the deer and noted that they were mostly does and juveniles. No bucks in sight. So why had they run? I texted Tandy,Look for reason why deer ran four miles. Chased? Dogs? Coywolves?
I got back aK.
Rick had said that a four-mile area was too big for a witch-working, and would have required hundreds of witches. He had said, “We would have noted that. Especially here in Knoxville.”
Why especially here in Knoxville? And then I knew.Secret City.
Secret City was a set of governmental and military research and development complexes, underground and aboveground, in and around Knoxville. They had a public face, in Oak Ridge National Laboratory, on property where the original atom bomb research was done, and the original uranium was made, for the weapons that had ended World War II. But today the government’sR&D and testing labs had spread out into Knox County, hidden in plain sight and powered by an energy grid that was equal to or better than any other in the country. Today the research was conducted by privately owned, government-subsidized companies that reportedly did energy research, propulsion research and development, radioisotope studies, and other complex studies.
The pond was only a few miles, as the geese flew, from the original lab at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where... where some of the information about psysitopes and the research on them had come from. Rick had to know this already, which meant he was about ten steps ahead of me in thinking that this might be more than a natural event. It was also why he didn’t want to consider this an MED until every other possibility had been explored and set aside. Because an MED here could be aimed at the government. Possibly a homegrown terrorist attack.
Then again, if one of the labs had a problem, and it accidentally caused the things we had seen, they might have fixed it already and not want it bandied about. And if the problem was already corrected, then it was unlikely that we’d ever discover who had done it or what had happened. It was also possible that a testing facility had an ongoing problem and it had gotten away from them, in which case they might be trying to keep it quiet so no congressional or military oversight committee started breathing down their necks. Also, if a lab was doing studies on paranormal energies, then it was top secret. And likely not something we would be allowed to continue investigating. Our case would be shut down. I thought about the woman’s voice in the deeps. About the dancer prodding the sleeper. If we were shut down, would the woman complete a working that would curse the land? Would the dancer eventually wake the sleeper? Something about that possibility left me cold and shivery inside, as if winter had taken over my soul, freezing my spirit.
