Phillip Cross clasped his hands together. Propping his elbows up on the edge of the desk, he stared over his knuckles at the glowing monitor in front of him.

Test Subject Thirty-One Delta and Artificer Candidate number One-One-Seven, walked about in the room with the artifacts in a scene he had replayed a dozen times so far. She moved around the circular table, stopping at each item. Two of them, she didn’t seem to react to at all. The other two caused obvious discomfort. As she approached one, a grimace appeared on her face, her stance shifted with unease, observation systems in the room detected an increase in her heart rate by twenty-seven percent, and light perspiration coated her skin.

The test subject proceeded around the room, then selected one of the items that made her obviously ill. Immediately, all signs of discomfort ceased. The subject turned to the open door and walked out with one of the two fake artifacts.

Phillip’s eyes drifted to one of the graphs. The randi levels in the room remained the same before she entered the room, while she was in the room, and after she left the room.

And yet, eyes shifting to the next graph, the randi level increased in the debriefing room as the subject entered. From a steady background noise of three point four to a respectable nineteen randis. Psionic energies didn’t manifest out of nothing. The subject hadn’t appeared to do anything, but with one of the false artifacts in her hand and the others remaining in the previous room, she could be the only source.

Rolling back on his exercise ball, Phillip placed his fingers to the keyboard and continued with his report.

Subject proceeded into Idaho Falls as per the recommendation I provided. Elevated psionic energy continued to cling to 31Δ on its way out of the facility. Unsanctioned testing unfortunately precludes keeping it within the facility for continued observation. Remote monitoring equipment will have to suffice until I can convince the administrators of the value of this particular subject.

Turning to his fifth monitor, Phillip frowned at the readings coming in from Idaho Falls. Thirty-One Delta had checked in, spent approximately fifteen minutes inside her room, then left. Randi levels, initially at approximately one, raised to sixteen when she entered. Her departure caused them to drop back down to just below two, leaving a small trace of her presence behind.

He didn’t know where she had gone or for what reason she had left. Irritating.

“Beatrice. Any updates on Thirty-One Delta?”

“Subject position unknown.”

Adjusting his glasses in annoyance, Phillip composed a new email to the administrators. His fingers dashed across the keyboard, filling out yet another petition to install additional psionic monitoring equipment throughout the nearby cities. It was, quite frankly, unacceptable. They had scanning equipment at airports and on all roads in and out of Idaho Falls, but next to nothing in the city itself.

At least that was something Walter would agree with him about. Phillip rarely saw eye-to-eye with the agent, but would certainly use the man when he could. Walter had the ear of the administrators. The lead trainer and scout for potential artificers had an eye for security, possibly as a result of his artificers being drawn toward trouble. There wasn’t a single exception among his six.

After CCing Walter on the email, Phillip stood, sending his seat rolling back against the wall of his office. He locked his terminal, shut out the lights, and ensured that the door locked before he left.

There was nothing more to do at the moment. Human as he was, his body required rest at some point or another. Best to catch a quick nap now. His subject would trip a sensor sooner or later. Hopefully the ones back in the hotel room. If she tripped a different sensor, it would likely mean that Walter had recruited a spy who was trying to leave the city with an artifact. From her records, Phillip couldn’t see any way that Thirty-One Delta was a spy, but everyone had a price.

It wouldn’t take much in her case. Just someone showing up and offering her what she wanted. A chance to be special. It was, after all, what he had done just a few hours ago.

Taking that in mind, perhaps it was a good thing she had selected one of the fake artifacts. If she did disappear on him, Carroll wouldn’t lose much aside from one of many test subjects.

Phillip didn’t quite make it to the elevator that would take him out of Psychodynamics and to the topside dormitories. A young man stood in the hallway between the office complex and the dormitory elevator. There were a number of researchers, technicians, maintenance crew, medical personnel, and other crew with authorization to be down in Psychodynamics. Each division had their own uniforms, making it fairly obvious who was part of which team.

A gray, sleeveless vest, worn open at the front and trimmed with blue, was not among the uniforms. Neither were blue and black striped gloves that went up to the elbows but lacked fingers. Absolutely nobody wore shorts with striped socks and sandals.

Grimacing, Phillip turned around. It wouldn’t be the first time he napped in his office. Beds were more comfortable and gave him better sleep, but his office did have a couch.

Before he could make it more than three steps, a flash of blue shimmered at his side.

Fogged yet blue eyes stared at him from centimeters away from his face.

Phillip’s heart lurched in his chest. It took all his composure to keep from crying out in alarm.

“Sapphire,” Phillip said, taking a slow and careful step backwards. “I thought you were tracking down that suspected Aleut artifact in Alaska.”

The man didn’t step back so much as he glided back. Head and shoulders hanging as if he were held up by a rope attached to his waist, his head lolled from one side to the other.

“That’s not my name.” “I have no name.” “Todd, why won’t people call me Todd?”

Three sets of voices echoed around Phillip. He grimaced at each. They all sounded like they were coming from different directions and different people. A child, an elderly woman, and man with a heavy British accent. Not the posh Queen’s English accent, but that of the almost unintelligible Cockney accent. None of the voices came from the boy in front of Phillip.

Artifacts tended to do something to their artificers. Generally minor things. Personality shifts that might make them less concerned with personal wellbeing if their artifact could easily fix their bodies. Or perhaps they might become more violent if given an artifact known to belong to a murderer. Small yet notable differences. Codename: Sapphire, on the other hand, had been disturbed before bonding with the Marionette’s Control Bar. A man unable to identify himself amid the millions of minds his psionic potential copied over the top of his own thought patterns.

Bonding a man with the most severe case of dissociative identity disorder ever documented to an artifact well documented for its dissociative themes had likely not been a wise decision in retrospect, but that had been before Phillip’s time. Back when Carroll had been throwing pseudoscience at the wall to see what would stick.

One of Walter’s six successful artificers.

In Phillip’s opinion, his definition of success differed from that of the administrators and colleagues. The other five were at least stable. This one?

Phillip considered turning and walking away. If there was one good thing about Sapphire, it was the artificer’s well documented aversion to violence. Creepy though he was, there was nothing to fear.

But… this was different than other times Phillip had interacted with Sapphire.

There was no Walter rushing up to stand in between them.

The hall, Phillip noted, was empty aside from Sapphire.

One opportunity, if used wisely, could open a great many doors.

A nap could wait.

“Todd, then?” Phillip said. No one had ever accused him of having a good smile, but he tried adopting one anyway. “Perhaps you might be willing to join me for a few quick tests?”

“Tests,” a voice said from Phillip’s left. “It always wants tests.” “But never tests itself.”

“I run tests on myself constantly, Sapphire. Or have others do them—I don’t want to bias the results,” Phillip said with a laugh that sounded forced even to his own ears.

“Tests, yes. I’d like that.”

Only one voice that time? Phillip kept his eyes on the floating body in front of him, but nothing more came out of it. “Lovely. Shall we head to the synapse mapping chamber? I was reviewing your charts last night in preparation for a project of my own and noticed that you hadn’t had an update in over three years.”

Fixing his smile in place, Phillip started walking. Sapphire drifted along beside him, still slumped like a string was pulling his body. His sandals grazed the floor.

“I know your project.” “I felt your project.” “It drew me back.”

That almost made Phillip stop, but he managed to keep walking. “You came back from looking for an artifact because you felt something?”

“No artifact.” “We found nothing.”

Speaking of himself in the plural now? Or had he been partnered with someone else? Artifact acquisition wasn’t Phillips department; he often only knew the basics if that.

“So you sensed something here?”

“Yesterday.” “We immediately returned against directives.”

“Yesterday? The psionic cascade?” That was the only thing that Phillip could think of that happened yesterday. Subject Thirty-One Delta’s burst had been prolific enough to reach the surface even from the depths beneath Carroll’s main campus, but to reach Alaska?

Or was it a unique facet of Sapphire’s ability?

A spark brightened in Phillip’s eye. Curious and curiouser.

“Who screamed?”

“Screamed?” Phillip glanced up and down the hall. The still empty hall. “No one screamed.”

“Not now.” “Who noticed me?” “I felt your project.” “I was your project, momentarily.”

“Oh. You mean…” Phillip trailed off, mind focused entirely on the subject in front of him. It took him a long moment to remember the actual name of the other subject. Long enough to push inside the Neural Connection Mapping room. “Danny? That sounds about right.”

“That isn’t my name.” “Wasn’t my name.”

“Oh? It was something like that.” The whispers swirled around Phillip. Irritated whispers. He ignored them. “Mind taking a seat in the machine? I’ll prepare the iodine injection.”

Sapphire didn’t so much as take a seat as his body flopped over the machine’s bench and went entirely limp.

The neural imaging machine looked similar to standard MRI or CT machines. A long table that would slide into and out from a large donut-shaped ring. All the intricate internals were shielded from view with plain white plastic. A coloration and material that clashed with the aesthetics throughout the rest of Psychodynamics.

Phillip wasn’t quite sure why they spent so much money on what could easily be replaced with plain concrete walls, but suspected the answer involved eccentric investors.

“Did you say that my subject felt you?” Phillip asked as he pressed a thick needle into Sapphire’s arm. There really should be a few other attendants present, both to ensure proper procedure took place and to assist with any complications that arose, but that would require contacting people.

Contacting people meant that Walter would hear about this sooner. Walter hearing about it meant that he would likely intervene, pulling his precious pets away from Phillip before proper science could be done.

“I felt me.” “Everyone feels me.” “Nobody notices me.”

Phillip didn’t say anything to that. He wasn’t sure what to say to that. Talking rarely resulted in useful information. Even when what they said made sense—which was a rarity when Sapphire was involved—everything other people said held biases in some way or other. Phillip much preferred hard data. Unfortunately, with so much about the human mind, consciousness, and psionic energies still unknown to science, hard data wasn’t as readily available as he felt it should be.

“Lie down and don’t move.”

The body on the bench didn’t move. Phillip had to reposition Sapphire’s head and neck, but left the rest of his body entirely alone.

Satisfied that Sapphire was doing as directed, he moved back into another chamber, one separated by psionically shielded glass to prevent any interference in the machine. A twist of a few knobs and a press of the large green button started the machine.

It hummed, leaving Phillip little to do aside from humming along with it as he watched the images, charts, and graphs fill themselves in on the terminal monitor in front of him.

Anomalies quickly manifested. Namely in the utter lack of activity within the body. Electrical activity in Sapphire’s brain barely existed. Not quite to the point of a corpse, but he had seen brain-dead patients with more lights on inside their heads. A quick touch to the terminal pulled up Sapphire’s old scans. Three years, not long before he acquired the Marionette’s Control Bar.

The old scans were chaotic. Almost the complete opposite. Every single synapse had constant activity. Not only that, but every few seconds, the entire pattern changed. With the mapping machine building the map in layers, it was like every few layers came from someone else’s brain.

Subject: Sapphire. Consciousness exists within artifact 0305? 0305, the Marionette’s Control Bar, is little more than a few sticks of wood and a few dangling strings. It is doubtful that anything would appear on a mapping image, but it should be tested anyway. When that fails to produce any results, how best to devise a device to detect consciousness?

Phillip’s finger tapped beside the keyboard as he considered the problem. He was not a hardware specialist. Psychodynamics had its own manufacturing division for just this sort of reason, but it was up to people like him to figure out the theory behind the devices. Manufacturing couldn’t do a thing with an imprecise order to simply build a consciousness detecting device.

The door to the mapping room slid aside before the imaging could finish.

Sapphire’s body dragged itself out of the machine, producing a few smeared layers that nonetheless lacked any activity. After a few blank layers, the machine produced an error and shut itself down.

Just as well. Walter walked into the room. Eyes hidden behind his mirrored shades, Phillip couldn’t see the other man’s full expression. He didn’t look particularly upset, which was good news. His lips still curled into a deep frown as he looked through the glass and spotted just who it was manning the controls.

Phillip waited, mentally preparing himself for the argument that was sure to ensue. Walter delayed, saying a few words to Sapphire that Phillip didn’t bother to flip on the room’s microphone to listen to. It ended with the artificer drifting out of the room while Walter approached the control room.

“Cross.”

Phillip wasn’t sure what he was supposed to take from the flat, low tone. “Walter. How have you been today?”

The sunglasses made it hard to tell, but Phillip was fairly certain he was getting an incredibly dull look.

“Yeah, I hate small talk too,” he said. “Which is why I decided to take action instead of talk. Did you know Sapphire hasn’t had a proper mapping since before he and the artifact bonded?”

That actually made Walter falter. He cocked his head to the side, raising an eyebrow. “He has. I’ve seen them.”

“Oh?” Phillip turned back to his terminal, tapped a few times, then turned the monitor to display the list of Sapphire’s scans. “They stop three years ago. Unless some idiot misnamed them. Some of our coworkers… it wouldn’t surprise me, frankly.”

“They’ve been deliberately expunged.”

“Oh?” Phillip tapped at his terminal again, returning the monitor to displaying the interrupted readings from Sapphire’s scan today. “Didn’t think the artifact research team needs to know that one of our artificers is so brain dead that I’m not sure he can be classified as a living being anymore?”

“It isn’t my call. The administrators—”

Phillip slammed his hands onto the control panel. “Administrators is the weakest excuse. They’re all a bunch of foolish idiots more concerned with accounting than proper science. You’re telling me they decided that the research team didn’t need to know something that I find incredibly vital?”

Walter crossed his arms, scowling down. “I more or less agree with you.”

“We’re like twelve blind people shoved into a small room, told to perform groundbreaking feats of research. All without smacking each other with our walking canes. Everyone has their own little projects. Nobody knows what anyone else is doing. No wonder your partner bowed out.”

Walter took an aggressive step forward. “Doctor,” he said, warning lacing his tone.

Phillip took a few careful steps backwards, trying to look more like he was pacing than running away. Mentioning Walter’s old parter was always a bad decision. For some reason, Phillip couldn’t stop himself. Walter probably wouldn’t attack him—he never had in the past—but he could find other ways to make life miserable.

“I couldn’t find Dyna in her dormitory. One of the technicians mentioned seeing Dyna down here. What were you doing?”

“Dyna?” Before Walter could respond, Phillip connected the dots. “Oh. I knew it was something like Danny… Who told you that?”

“Does it matter?”

“I would like for them to be fired immediately. Yes.”

“Cross.”

Phillip let out a long sigh, waving a dismissive hand. “A joke,” he lied. No sense hiding it any longer. He would just go through Beatrice to figure out what happened. “I put her through a single-blind artifact selection.”

Walter stepped forward again, raising his voice. “You what? You gave her an artifact?”

“No, actually. She selected a fake.”

No need to say anything more. Especially nothing about the anomalous randi levels. Delta was his. A potential artificer with all the data going to him, not being expunged before the artifact research team could see it.

His response had the expected effect on Walter. Obvious, blatant surprise crossed his face, visible even with his sunglasses in the way. “A fake?” he asked in that tone of voice that said he didn’t believe it.

“Some cheap mirror I ordered online for ten dollars. Aged it up a bit, hot glued a camera lens to the inside, and told her it was some legendary spy equipment. She’s currently ‘bonding’ with it out in the city. I sent her out there specifically to keep you from interfering—” And because the operation was technically unsanctioned by the administrators. No sense getting them involved any more than necessary. “—so I would prefer if you did not. I’m sure she’ll be back tomor—”

A two-tone alert sounded over the room’s speaker system. “Agent Walter. Your attention is required with a Level—”

“Beatrice.” Walter interrupted, sounding far angrier than Phillip had ever heard him before. Especially with someone else. Especially with Beatrice. “I am having a discussion with Doctor Cross. If this is the same kind of interruption as yesterday, I do not want to hear a word more from you. Task resolution is in your name. I’m sure you can find another way to resolve the situation.”

That had Phillip raising his eyebrows. Some kind of altercation occurred between them yesterday?

“Beatrice requests escalation of system privileges to deal with an ongoing Level Five situation.”

Walter mouthed ‘Level Five’ to himself before shaking his head. “Granted. Whatever you need. Handle it yourself.”

“Understood. Beatrice System engaging emergency Autonomous Task Resolution Environment.” A few rather angry-sounding beeps followed the edict, but Beatrice didn’t speak again.

Phillip, eyebrows slowly returning to normal, looked up at his own reflection in Walter’s lenses. “Are you sure you don’t need to handle that.”

“Beatrice will contact me again or whoever she needs to if she can’t do it herself. At the moment, I think I need to handle you. Let’s have a long chat about overstepping our bounds, Doctor.”

Phillip sighed. With any luck, Beatrice would interrupt again. Unfortunately, he didn’t believe in luck. “My office or yours?”

“Mine.”