Emerald sniffed at the chill air biting her nostrils. Idaho Falls normally had a nature smell to it. Farmland, the Snake River, and the generally undeveloped area all gave it a natural scent. Without a large population and with the rising popularity of electronic vehicles—as slow as the people here were to adopt new technology—exhaust smog was effectively nonexistent.

At the moment, however, Emerald didn’t smell much. Cold air had a way of deadening the senses.

The natural senses, anyway. Emerald wasn’t looking for any natural smell.

All artificers had their own way of detecting artifacts. Some got feelings. Some saw things that weren’t there. Emerald smelled things. A purely mental smell. Tests had proved that, even in a sealed suit with its own air supply, she would be able to ‘smell’ nearby artifacts.

Of course, she doubted that they would still be here.

Standing on the roof of an old laundromat, Emerald replayed the events of three weeks ago in her mind. It was the third time she had been here since. Every time brought with it mild confusion.

Emerald mimed tapping the stem of her pocket watch. She swung a pistol, hammering at the spot where one of the men had been that day. The spotter for the sniper. At the time, he dropped without resistance. A blow to the brain stem ran a risk of permanent brain damage, but even the worst case scenario would have left enough for Psychodynamics and their mind technicians to rummage through.

Stepping forward, Emerald repeated her motions of stomping down on the sniper before he could react. With him in the middle of packing up a Remington 700 rifle—the civilian version—he hadn’t been able to react. Evaluating a lack of threat from both the men—the first of whom hadn’t moved—Emerald holstered her pistol and withdrew a fistful of zip-ties. Foot planted on the sniper’s back, he hadn’t been able to resist. She had his hands tied in seconds and his legs bound shortly after.

Turning around, Emerald started toward the spotter, who had been still unmoving on the ground, only to freeze.

That was where everything went sideways. As soon as she approached him, she had been the one on the ground with both of the others hale and active.

Emerald sniffed at the air again, less because she was trying to detect anything now and more in an attempt to stimulate her memory.

Had there been an artifact present? She had smelled one on Dyna, but here…

There must have been a third person working with the two men. Someone far enough away that she hadn’t noticed but still able to render assistance to their team.

“Ruby,” Emerald said, “would you be a dear and…”

Trailing off, Emerald frowned.

“Oh.”

Emerald stood alone on the roof. Ruby was back at the institute. The younger girl had been spending a great amount of time there, hovering about the new artificer. Probably driving the poor woman insane.

It felt awkward. Every time Emerald noticed her missing presence, she couldn’t help but frown. For over a year, they had been side-by-side. Presumably, once they got a new assignment, the institute would put Ruby in her care again. Despite her artifact, Ruby wouldn’t be sent anywhere on her own. And if left alone at the institute… Well, there was a reason the administrators decided to send Ruby out into a potentially dangerous situation.

Shaking her head, Emerald knelt down on one knee and looked out over the road down below. She crouched right where the sniper had been, aimed in the same direction. It was the perfect vantage point for this road, looking down along its entire length. The men had chosen their spot well.

Too well, in fact.

How had they known to set up here? From the motel, Emerald had been well within reach of four different places that she could have chosen to take Dyna. Walter had given her the initiative of choice. Even if there had been a powerful mind reader lurking in the shadows, the time between Emerald deciding where to go to the arcade and arriving on this street had been only a few minutes. Not nearly enough time to get setup using any traditional methods.

Emerald glanced back to where they had pinned her down after that abrupt reversal of the situation.

A small smile spread across her face.

“Where are you?” she said, slowly looking out over the buildings. A mysterious third actor wouldn’t still be present, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t any clues to be found.

Especially not now that she had ‘borrowed’ some equipment from the institute. Stalking across the rooftop, Emerald popped open the top of a large attache case. Rather than documents or other mundane items, the entire interior was covered in electronics. Red, black, yellow, and blue wires stretched from node to node. Indicator lights in a variety of colors blinked and pulsed. Sixteen-segment displays burned a bright red, showing off the passive readings the device detected.

Someone else would probably think it was a bomb. Of course, real bombs never looked so fancy. A plastic bottle on the side of the road loaded with explosives, a sealed steel container that looked more like a cooking pot than a bomb, or even a few plumbing pipes strapped together. Those were real bombs.

This just looked like something from a movie.

Pulling a few thick metal rods from the case’s side, Emerald moved about the roof, extended the legs of the rods into small tripods, planting them down roughly where she and the two men had been. Once sure that they wouldn’t tip over, she returned to the case and flipped a thick red rocker switch to the on position.

It had been three weeks. The Carroll Institute had already sent a team out here. Several, in fact. The earlier ones had been to ward off civilians and the local police force while the ones that came later had investigated the scene for exactly what Emerald was looking for now.

Emerald couldn’t access the official reports. Her clearance level was apparently not high enough. The Carroll Institute had a great many secrets. Too many to ferret out on her own. Most were probably boring statistics or financial information. But classified reports that involved her? Emerald wasn’t just going to sit around with her fingers in her ears.

Given the passage in time, Emerald wasn’t expecting strong readings. Just a psionic signature that she could attempt to cross-reference with the institute’s internal database.

And yet, the indicator lights started flashing. The black and white wheel set into the machine didn’t just start spinning, it turned fast enough that touching it might end up slicing off the tip of her finger. A series of lights that formed a graph quickly maxed out. The top light of all columns turned red.

“No wonder they classified this,” Emerald hummed as she watched the sixteen-segment displays flash through numbers faster than she could process.

Even while using her artifact, Emerald would barely cause a reaction. Sapphire, the artificer with the highest active psionics, could only push the graph halfway to the top. Unbound artifacts reached higher than that, but to max out the meter? Seeing the device fail to settle actually made Emerald shudder.

Three weeks after the incident and there was still this much residual energy able to be picked up by a portable device? Emerald glanced down at the building beneath her feet, wondering if something inside might have acted like a psionic sponge, absorbing all the energy. But… that couldn’t be. The institute would have collected whatever object caused the issue and likely would have locked it in the Vault.

Could it be the building itself?

No. Even that, they would have blocked off access, buying out the place and shutting it down until they could figure out the best way to remove it from the street. It didn’t get much traffic, but Emerald had seen customers walk into the laundromat now and again.

It had to be residue from an artificer. One more powerful than any the Carroll Institute had produced.

Emerald shut down the device. She didn’t get the psionic reading she wanted, but continuing to run it might end up damaging the equipment. Which would be more trouble than it was worth. The institute would already be displeased with her taking it on a small trip into town. Still, she wasn’t giving up. Not just yet. Something that powerful shouldn’t be difficult to locate. That the Carroll Institute hadn’t already done so likely meant that they were nowhere in the city anymore, but Emerald could at least track down where they had been and maybe find some information about where they were going.

Unfortunately, while packing up the machine, Emerald’s phone rang.

Noting the blocked number and the current time, she answered the call and held the phone to her ear without speaking.

“White nine-seven-seven.”

“Green dash eleven-eleven.”

“There’s been an incident,” Walter said, deep voice sounding a bit tinny on the phone’s speaker. It wasn’t able to replicate his heavy baritone.

“I was going to bring it right back,” Emerald said. “I thought you were off to the other side of the country anyway?” That was the whole reason she had waited until today to do this, after all.

Walter didn’t respond right away. When he did, his tone carried a note of annoyance. “What did you do?”

“You weren’t calling about… Oh. Nothing. I didn’t do anything at all. Just relaxing on my day off. You mentioned an incident?”

“Red and our mutual friend attempted to interview one of the guests. Something used the guest as an antenna, reached into our friend’s mind, and carried on a conversation. They are being detained and examined for residual effects, subliminal implants, and the works. A full debriefing will follow. I need you to ensure that nothing goes wrong before I return.”

“Sounds like things have already gone wrong,” Emerald said, mind racing.

Her eyes drifted down to the psionic detection machine. Coincidence? No. Absolutely not. Guests, in Walter’s barely-disguised metaphor, meant prisoners. The same prisoners who had been on this very rooftop. Whatever caused the readings on the machine likely was the same ‘something’ that reached into their friend’s mind. Dyna’s mind.

“This ‘something’ wouldn’t happen to be some incredibly powerful psionic force that can’t even be measured properly with our devices, would it?” Emerald asked when Walter didn’t comment on her observation.

“Green… What do you know?”

“Less than I would like to. What are we dealing with here? Psi-Corps? Some new toy from Maanasik?”

“Further details are under investigat—”

“You know something, White. I don’t like going into situations completely blind. Yet, for some reason, the administrators have classified all relevant documents higher than my clearance allows me to see. We had an agreement, you and I. You keep me in the loop and get me what I wanted and I’ll take care of your less pleasant jobs for you. This is one of those loops I need to be in.”

Again, Walter hesitated before responding. Probably trying to figure out what he could say without saying everything. Or anything.

“Just tell me this much for now,” Emerald said, “does this have anything to do with Red’s parents?”

“Unlikely. Neither have shown themselves in the last year and this situation is outside their demonstrated operating procedures.”

“They couldn’t change how they act?”

“That is possible, which is why I said unlikely rather than a definite no. I won’t say anything more over the phone. We can discuss this in person when I return.”

Emerald let out a short sigh. She wasn’t sure if it was a sigh of relief or frustration. Both, perhaps. She had a feeling that she wasn’t going to get anything else out of him. Waiting would have to suffice. At least an in-person conversation could forgo their round-about way of talking. “Is Red alright?”

“As far as I can tell, she was merely present and was otherwise uninvolved. You will have to speak with the security team or… Doctor Cross.”

“Lovely. My favorite person.”

Walter made a slight humming noise that might have been a note of agreement. Not that he would ever say so. “Ensure that everything goes smoothly. If threats present themselves, you may remove them however you see fit. I must continue my report here, unfortunately, and will still return as planned on Friday.”

“Yeah, yeah. I can hold the fort for a few days. Not like anything too dangerous is likely to happen at the institute.”

There might be psychics aplenty and dangerous experiments, but nobody rushed through the halls in tactical gear with suppressed Russian weapons.

“Be on your guard. We don’t know exactly what we are dealing with.”

Emerald’s eyes turned back to the rooftop. “Yeah. I am aware.”

“Good. White out.”

Emerald slowly shook her head as she pocketed her phone. Walter was right.

Ever since she got her artifact, she had been beyond confident in herself and her abilities. Even unable to affect things while time was stopped, she could still move and prepare. She could position herself in the perfect spot, start time for only the length of time it took to accomplish something, then vanish once again.

On paper, within the Carroll Institute’s databases, Emerald was listed as an eighteen-year old woman. But in reality, she had lived through several years worth of frozen time. Almost every moment of which she had spent improving herself. Marksmanship, athletics, endurance… Books, game theory, mathematics… If she focused her efforts on psionics, she could easily surpass Doctor Cross’ knowledge within a single afternoon. The only limitation was, essentially, food. Although the doctors still debated whether or not she aged during stopped time, there was no debate that Emerald expended Calories.

Yet, despite all that, it had nearly vanished in an instant. If those two guests had simply decided to shoot her in the head instead of tying her up, all her efforts would have gone to waste. One unknown artificer out there had nearly ruined everything.

And they could probably do it again.

Walter was right.

Emerald didn’t know what the capabilities or limitations their unknown opponent had. She didn’t know their motivations or orders. All she knew was that a single situation had been turned on its head.

Now, that same opponent had reached into the heart of Psychodynamics and attacked Ruby and Dyna.

Emerald’s fist clenched. She knelt down, picked up the case, and promptly stormed off the rooftop. A maintenance ladder led down to her parked car. She tossed the case into the back seat before slamming the door shut to make sure that it would stay shut during the trip back over to the Carroll Institute.

Someone had messed with Ruby. And while she didn’t know Dyna that well, the other woman helped keep those two men from stopping all Emerald’s futures.

Emerald would not let them come to harm.

She threw the car into gear.