Loki's Gambit, page 24
part #1 of I Bring the Fire Series
Stumbling back a little bit under the weight of the box, Amy says, “Okay, yes, Sir,” and leaves the office with Steve already bent over one of the folders.
Amy takes the box back to her desk and tries not to cry. Why did Agent Merryl have to leave? It turned out ADUO had been watching her house ever since she met Loki. Merryl was the same old guy with too square jaw she’d seen buying ice cream one day—and the Mexican ice cream guy? ADUO, too, Agent Hernandez. She likes Agent Merryl. He is steadying, calm, and kind.
Now she is stuck with some patriotic hard-ass.
Opening the box, she rifles through a few folders—this assignment makes her want to cry even more than Rogers yelling at her. The files already look like they are in order...which means she’s just verifying they are in order, which is worse than ordering them to begin with. There is a special room in Hell for file organization quality control. Swallowing back her tears she rifles through the files. She blinks. There is a red folder wedged beneath the purchase orders.
Red almost always means classified.
She should pick it up and take it to Rogers right now. She digs out the folder and is going to take it to the office, really, when she notices the words “Agent Steve Rogers” on the tab.
Hum.
She shouldn’t.
She really shouldn’t. She looks at the red folder in her hands. She looks back at the box of filing. Her heart falls; just looking at the box bores her nearly to tears. She looks at the red folder again in her hands. This might be interesting. And she’ll just take a tiny peek. What harm can it do? And he’s got her file, and also her Alfheim dresses, and the Subaru so....
She starts flipping through the folder. At first it is just his history. How he was born in rural Alabama to poor parents, and then moved up to Chicago when he was eight or so—where he remained poor. She’d kind of have sympathy except, he just yelled at her. There’s his stint with the Marines, a bachelor's from Yale on the GI bill, and a master's degree in public policy from the University of Chicago. She tilts her head. So he’s an impressive ass; those are the worst type. She flips through a few more pages; his hobbies include Kumdo, whatever that is. And then she reads his recent history—marriage, birth of his daughter, promotion to Public Liaison for the FBI’s Chicago branch, divorce, and then...
Uh-oh.
Amy’s hands start to shake but she can’t put the folder down until she’s done reading.
She swallows. Okay, she’ll just take it to him and pretend she just found it. No problem. Easy. Hopefully, he won’t notice her trembling.
Taking a deep breath, Amy walks down the hall. It’s pretty empty in the building. Most of the agents seem to be elsewhere most of the time since they moved here. It’s a lot different from a few days ago when they were in the office on Roosevelt and all the ADUO agents seemed bored.
The door to Steve ’s office is closed. She’s about to turn back when she hears a muffled, yet extremely familiar voice. Her eyes go wide and she’s suddenly too angry to even be afraid of Steve. Bursting into the room, she sees Agent Rogers behind his desk which is now on fire, aiming a gun at Loki.
“You really should tell me where you got the technology,” Loki says quietly.
There is the sound of the gun firing twice. Amy screams. There are two dull thuds in the wall next to her and Loki turns to her apparently unharmed.
Loki’s wearing a light gray suit, or at least he’s pretending to wear a suit. No tie though. And he looks like he has lost a lot of weight. His hair is black now, which is weird.
He blinks. “Amy,” he says. He blinks again. “I tried to wire you money, but apparently your bank account is no longer open?”
Her nostrils flare up, she goes hot—and it has nothing to do with the blaze in the room. There’s a fire extinguisher on the floor. Picking it up, Amy pulls the pin and aims it at Steve’s desk and yells at Loki. “You steal all my money and then you come here. Are you trying to make me lose my job, too?” She’s finally got a new plan, and things are going to work out, and he’s going to ruin everything all over again.
“You know him?” says Steve.
Loki’s face goes livid. “I stole nothing! You offered it to me! You said to take as much as I needed.”
“I didn’t mean to take it from my bank account!” Amy shouts. She can feel the veins in her neck popping.
Raising his arms, Loki says, “What did you mean, then, pray tell?” His eyes widen. “You can’t have meant just the money in your change belt? How was that supposed to buy me an airline ticket to Europe?”
“Ticket to Europe?” says Steve.
“You gave me your oath you wouldn’t steal!” says Amy, throwing the spent fire extinguisher at Loki. Of course it just goes right through him. She rips off the heavy sweater she’s wearing—it’s Chicago and the temperature fell 40 degrees literally overnight. Dropping it on a flame that’s not quite out on the floor, she steps on it with her shoe since Steve seems to be in some sort of shock.
“How did the fire extinguisher just pass right through him?” says Steve. “And why didn’t my bullets work?”
Ignoring Steve, she narrows her eyes at Loki. “You walked into my bank as me and withdrew all my money! That’s stealing and probably a felony.”
What is obviously an astral projection of Loki takes a step closer. Bending so his face is next to hers, he points a finger at her chest and says, “You told me I could take as much as I wanted. I thought your law was higher than any nation’s law!”
Amy stands, breathing heavily. Loki looks down at her chest and smiles. Amy follows his gaze. The shirt she was wearing underneath the now ruined sweater isn’t really meant to be seen without an upper layer.
She crosses her arms over her chest and gives him a dirty look. And then she closes her eyes. A tear falls out; she swallows and puts her hands to her face.
“Oh, damn it,” she mutters. The thing is, she can totally see how this happened. She did say to take as much as he needed, and he had seen her bank account info, and he just doesn’t understand rules and morality the way humans do.
For a moment there is no sound in the office but the click of the air conditioning that really should have been shut off when the heat wave ended. And then it’s like a dam that’s been building up for months finally breaks. Amy takes a heavy breath—and sobs. “After you left everything went to Hell! Beatrice broke her hip and had a stroke, I forfeited my scholarship because I didn’t have any money to pay for extras and because I was maybe in shock, and to take care of her, but then it didn’t matter because my mom came back and got durable power of attorney because I didn’t have a good lawyer, and she brought her creepy boyfriend, too, and I lost my home.”
She wipes her face. And despite it all she was kind of worried about Loki, angry, hurt and confused—but worried, too. She’d desperately hoped that his draining her bank account was some horrible misunderstanding, that she wasn’t that stupid, that she hadn’t been so misled by him of the inappropriate comments yet surprising heroism. And now she knows it was a misunderstanding, and she’s relieved... and more worried than ever. He’s too skinny, he’s unshaven and, “Why is your hair black? Is that just your astral image or is it real?” she asks. It makes his pale skin look absolutely sickly.
Loki’s just staring at her, his mouth slack. At her words he nervously runs his hands over his head. In the trail of his fingers the ginger color returns. “Oh, that —”
“That’s a very sad story,” says Steve, outside of Amy’s line of vision.
Loki gives him an angry look and then turns to Amy. “What is a stroke?”
“Blockage in the brain,” says Amy with a sniff.
Loki looks horrified. “Is it curable?” he whispers.
Shaking her head, Amy wipes her nose. “She’s really old; her brain isn’t as plastic. She doesn’t remember me anymore or anything really.”
“Why isn’t my phone working?” she hears Steve say, pacing around the room. “Or the fire alarms?”
Loki’s eyes flit briefly to Steve and then he looks back to Amy. “I’m sorry. I would offer to try and help. But I really am hopeless when it comes to fixing things. I’m better at —”
“Setting things on fire?” says Steve.
Both Loki and Amy turn to Steve.
“You pointed a gun at me,” Loki says.
“But it wouldn’t have hurt you,” Amy says, brow furrowing. “You are in your astral form.”
“You set my desk on fire,” says Steve, in the same sort of calm voice you might use to comment on the weather.
Loki winces and turns to her. “You know how it is. Lately, when I’m excited...” He raises his hands. “Poof.”
“Like the candles in the living room and the kitchen?” says Amy, remembering him setting them alight.
“Yes,” says Loki, nodding earnestly. He looks down. “And those pictures in Malson’s portfolio.”
“Oh,” says Amy, going cold. She couldn’t fault him for that. If she could burn the images from that psychopath’s collection from her brain she would. Amy glances at Steve, his eyes are narrowed, and he’s looking between the two of them, but he’s quiet.
“It does happen when he’s upset,” says Amy.
“Hmmmm....” says Steve. He doesn’t even look mad anymore. Or frightened. Which is creepy. Granted, he’s had a little experience with Norse so-called-god types himself, so maybe that’s why he’s so put together...although it seems unfair that he seems to have pulled himself together a lot faster than she did.
Leaning in closer Loki says, “There is something in the basement of the building down the street, Amy. Something very dangerous. Something very dangerous things will want.”
Amy shivers and Loki looks at Steve. “It would be for the best if you let me help you get rid of it. But to get rid of it, I first have to break through that nasty outer containment field.”
“The Promethean Sphere around the World Seed!” says Amy. She knows because it was mentioned in Steve’s file. Steve’s eyes flash to hers.
Uh-oh.
Loki smiles gently. “Is that what they’re calling the containment sphere around Cera? Do you know where they got the technology, Amy? It looks vaguely Vanir, but mutated. I need to understand it if I’m to...fix it.”
The Promethean Sphere was just a side note in the file. Shaking her head vigorously, she looks at Steve.
Narrowing his eyes at Loki he says, “You know, you could be one of those very bad things.”
“He’s not really bad,” says Amy. “You should have met Thor. He was a creep. And Loki didn’t try to strangle you...” She stops herself just before she says, “like Odin.”
Both Loki and Steve’s eyes slide to her. Steve looks angry. Loki looks bemused. “Your own intelligence says I’m the good guy,” says Loki, eyes sliding back to Steve.
Steve’s brow furrows. “I don’t know anything about that.”
Giving a twisted smile, Loki tilts his head. And then he looks back at Amy. “I never renege on my oaths, Amy.” He winks. And then he’s gone. No poof, or pop, or anything.
Amy looks back at Steve and wrings her hands.
“How did you know about the Promethean Sphere?” he says quietly.
Amy looks at the red file she dropped on the ground. Steve follows her eyes. And then he looks back at his desk, covered under fire extinguisher foam. For the first time Amy notices the smell of burnt plastic in the air.
She looks at Steve and swallows. Prepared for, “You’re fired, or you’re going to jail,” she nearly jumps when Steve says, “Do you have a jacket or anything at your desk?”
“Uh...no,” says Amy. His eyes flit to her chest and the tight lacey undershirt she’s wearing. She crosses her arms again.
Steve turns around, goes to a duffel and pulls out a large gray sweatshirt that says Marines in black letters. “You can wear this,” he says, carefully keeping his eyes on hers. She pulls it over her head. It smells like Tide and duffel bag vinyl. Walking past her, he says, “Let’s go find an office that isn’t filled with poisonous fumes.”
Sitting in a conference room, Steve opens a laptop, turns it on, and checks the Promethean counter next to him. The beige device has a circular head the size of a petri dish attached to a handle. The head of the device has a flat circular screen. Right now the screen is slate gray. In the presence of dark energy, or as some of the tech guys around here scientifically call it, ‘magic,’ it glows blue. Steve had one at his desk. It had begun to glow just before the apparition calling itself Loki popped into the room.
Across from him is Amy Lewis, the receptionist he had flagged as a classic example of government waste. She may have just saved his life. Though she seems to think Loki’s setting his desk on fire was an accident, Steve knows better. Loki started the fire on purpose. But Steve doesn’t disabuse her of the notion of his innocence. Something is tickling at the back of Steve’s mind, and he doesn’t want to give up any cards just yet.
He glances up at Lewis, now wearing his sweatshirt. It is a very weird ending to a very weird day and a truly bizarre week.
Merryl had drawn Steve into ADUO just days after the incident under CBOE. Merryl said someone with Steve’s military experience and ‘people skills’ would be a great asset to a department that was largely techies and lawyers that the Bureau couldn’t place anywhere else.
Steve has ambitions of leaving the Bureau and getting into politics someday; joining an obscure department like ADUO diverts those plans for a while, but he does have priorities. Seeing that the country's third largest metropolis doesn’t blow up is at the top of the list. He may not know exactly what the World Seed thing is, but he knows it isn’t good.
And now there are the events in Wyoming.
This morning Steve received a call at 0400 from Assistant Director James Merryl. The first words out of Merryl’s lips over the phone were, “Steve, there is an outbreak of trolls in Wyoming. I have to be out of the office this week. I’d like you to take over.”
It was a bad idea. Steve’s not up to speed yet on anything. He’s been too busy helping to secure the perimeter around the World Seed and keeping the damn thing’s presence quiet. He’s barely familiar with the department staff. And he only knows a bit about the Promethean devices—the magic detectors and containment fields. The technology was given to ADUO by an operative code-named Prometheus. No one seems to know who he is or where he came from. Or if they do they’re not telling Steve.
But considering it was 4 in the morning, it’s understandable that the first words out of Steve’s mouth weren’t something logical and coherent like, “Do you think that’s wise when I’m so new to the department,” or even, “Yes, Sir, thank you, sir.” Instead Steve said, “Trolls...on the internet?”
Merryl’s response was, “No, Steve, more like the Incredible Hulk. You’ll be fine.” There was yelling in the background and then Merryl said, “The damn thing isn’t dead. I have to go.”
So here he is playing catch up after nearly getting himself toasted by an entity that may or may not be a Norse god.
Shaking his head, Steve hits a button on the laptop on the conference room table. Amy Lewis’ file opens. A few days ago Steve asked Merryl about Lewis and Merryl had said, “Read her file.” Steve assumed that meant the pretty receptionist without any security clearance reading a magazine during his tour wasn’t important enough to discuss.
He skims through the first pages and puts his hand to his jaw. What was the adage? Never assume. It makes an ass of you and me. He sighs. He does feel like an ass. Merryl brought Amy into ADUO because having her work for him in the office meant he didn’t have to have a security detail stalking her 24/7. Steve’s boss had figured, correctly, Loki might come to call on her again.
More than that, although Steve had taken the girl for an unambitious leech on the government payroll, she actually looks like a good kid from rough beginnings. Her dad, now in jail for fraud, split when she was little, and her mom has been married five times. Miss Lewis left home as soon as she was eighteen and moved in with her grandparents. She got her GED in Chicago, went to community college, earned straight A’s, and then went to the University of Illinois on scholarship where she earned a degree in biochemistry. She got a full ride to vet school from there.
And then she met Loki during a run in with serial killer Ed Malson on a highway late at night. He taps a finger on the desk and scowls. “So this Loki character saved your life?” By beating Malson to death with a small log.
She jumps in her chair and then says, “Yes. He heard me somehow—I think like Odin heard you...”
She stops.
Steve shrugs. “You were filing, you saw the red folder, you were so shocked when you pulled it out of the box it fell out of your hands, you couldn’t help but see certain details.”
Lewis’s eyes go wide.
Steve restrains a sigh. He gently prompts her. “Because that’s how it happened. Right?”
“Okay,” says Lewis slowly, as though unsure.
Steve nods. “What do you know about this ‘hearing’?” Because he’s pretty damn curious. Having his mind read is one of the most frustrating things he’s ever experienced.
Lewis looks away again. “From what Loki told me they—Asgardians, and I guess Frost Giants—they hear people in their heads if it relates to their higher purpose somehow.”
Steve leans back as much as he can in the conference room chair and taps his hand on the desk. “And what is that purpose, do you think?”
Shrugging, Lewis still doesn’t look at him. “Odin is the king or chief of the gods. Loki is the trickster and god of mischief and lies. Loki brings about the end of the world—supposedly, in the myths.”
“And you brought him home,” says Steve, rubbing his eyes. Just like an injured bird.
Lewis looks sharply at him. “It wasn’t the brightest idea, I know. But he had nowhere to go, or I thought he didn’t, and he really isn’t that bad. And I don’t think he realized the consequences of his actions when he took all of my money, really. And he has set things on fire...accidentally.”
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