Chapter 195: FBI
Jake was in a good mood walking away from the Paladin field office, which was not his default state after conversations with organizations whose founding premise was the elimination of something he was trying to understand.
Roland had been more cooperative than expected. The technical specifications for the Paladin restraint devices — the electromagnetic disruption arrays, the field generators that interfered with the neurological interface jumpers used to access spatial coordinates — were detailed and well-documented. Decades of empirical research on a phenomenon the Paladins barely understood had produced data that was considerably more useful than their conclusions about what to do with it.
Jake had traded Birkin's preliminary genetic analysis for the full technical archive. Roland had gotten the better end of that exchange in terms of what he'd actually asked for. Jake had gotten the better end in terms of what he actually needed.
The Red Queen materialized beside him as he walked — her holographic projection running through a reflective surface in a storefront window, the avatar keeping pace with him as he moved down the sidewalk.
"You transited here specifically for the blood sample," she said. It had the quality of someone working through a sequence of reasoning rather than asking a question. "But you're still here."
"The Paladin technology is worth having," Jake said. "And there's something else."
"The restraint device mechanism." She paused. "You think it can be developed into something larger."
"The Paladin arrays work by detecting and disrupting the spatial interface that jumpers use. That's a passive function — they found the signal and learned to jam it." Jake kept walking. "But if you can detect and jam a spatial interface, you're most of the way toward understanding how to generate one independently."
The Red Queen processed this. "You want to build a portal. Not just for one person — for a formation."
"The phone works for individual transit," Jake said. "It has limitations. Moving a hundred Knights and a hundred robots through a dimensional shift one at a time is slow and operationally vulnerable." He looked at the street ahead. "A large-format portal that a force could move through simultaneously would change the equation significantly."
"The Paladin technology is a prototype in that direction," she said. "A very early one."
"Most useful things start as very early prototypes." He paused at a corner, checking his internal map of the town. "Upload yourself to the local network. I need eyes on David — where he goes, what he does, when he starts using the ability regularly. The blood sample is the genetic baseline. I need behavioral data too, specifically the spatial coordinate interface — how he selects destinations, how the process initiates, whether there's a consistent neurological pattern."
"You want me to monitor a teenager's daily routine."
"I want you to monitor a teenager's teleportation pattern. The daily routine is incidental."
"He's bought a bus ticket to Boston," the Red Queen said, with the tone of someone who had already been watching. "He left forty minutes ago."
Jake nodded. "Then we're going to Boston."
He found a bar near the waterfront that evening and sat at the counter and ordered something that came in a glass and was cold and thought about spatial mechanics.
The bar had the particular atmosphere of places that existed primarily as infrastructure for people who needed somewhere to be — decent lighting, ambient noise calibrated to conversation, the specific social contract of a counter seat which was that nobody asked you anything you didn't volunteer. Jake appreciated the contract.
The Red Queen's voice came through his earpiece periodically with updates — David was in Boston, David had checked into a cheap hotel under a false name, David had spent two hours walking around the financial district looking at banks the way people looked at things they were planning to interact with.
Jake listened to the updates and thought about Zola's initial assessment of the Paladin technical archive, which the Red Queen had already transmitted to the Wasteland lab. Zola's response had been characteristically precise: the disruption mechanism was interesting, the field generation components were salvageable for a different application, and the spatial coordinate detection array was the genuinely novel piece that warranted serious attention. He'd estimated six weeks to develop a proof-of-concept portal generator at small scale, assuming adequate resources, which in the Wasteland lab translated to adequate resources.
Six weeks was acceptable. The portal concept was a long-term infrastructure project, not an immediate operational requirement.
The immediate requirement was the genetic sample, which was already with Birkin, and the Paladin technical archive, which was already with Zola, and the behavioral data on David's teleportation pattern, which the Red Queen was collecting in real time.
Jake finished his drink and decided Boston deserved at least a few days of proper attention before the next phase of the operation required him to do something more demanding than drink at a waterfront bar and think.
He spent a week in Boston.
The Red Queen reminded him, twice, that he had objectives.
He was aware of his objectives. He was also aware that Boston in winter had a specific quality that he found genuinely enjoyable — the cold that had actual weight to it, the way the harbor looked in the early morning, the particular density of history in a city that had been doing significant things for several centuries and hadn't forgotten any of them. He took photographs. He ate well. He used the FBI credentials the Red Queen had fabricated to access two restricted areas that he was curious about for entirely non-operational reasons.
"A bank has been robbed," the Red Queen said on the eighth morning, while Jake was standing on the waterfront looking at the harbor.
He turned away from the water. "Which one?"
"Immigrant Bank, downtown. Twenty-three minutes ago. The vault was accessed without the door being opened — no damage to the locking mechanism, no sign of forced entry, nothing on the security cameras. The bank didn't realize anything was missing until a routine audit flagged the discrepancy." A pause. "The vault had time locks, pressure sensors, and reinforced steel plating. The access pattern is consistent with someone who moved through the physical barriers rather than through them."
"That's David," Jake said. "Lock it down."
"Already done. I've intercepted all outbound communications about the incident — police reports, insurance notifications, news tips, everything. The story is currently contained to the responding officers and the bank's senior management." Another pause. "I've also issued a notification through the FBI's external communications system — a specialized financial crimes unit is being dispatched to lead the investigation."
"Who's leading it?"
"Special Agent Lancelot," the Red Queen said, with the specific quality of an intelligence that found its own humor genuinely funny. "I took the liberty."
Jake hailed a cab.
The scene outside Immigrant Bank had the organized chaos of a police response that had been going well until something more senior arrived and started asking questions. Two patrol cars, a detective's unmarked vehicle, and a growing perimeter of yellow tape that the bank's customers were not pleased about.
Jake got out of the cab, straightened his coat, and showed the credentials the Red Queen had fabricated to the officer managing the perimeter. The credentials were physically indistinguishable from genuine FBI identification because the Red Queen had based them on the actual template pulled from the Bureau's internal document system, which she had accessed without particular difficulty.
The officer lifted the tape.
Inside the bank, the manager was in the middle of a conversation with a white-haired man in a gray suit who was showing his own credentials and asking detailed questions about the vault's security specifications. The white-haired man's credentials identified him as Department of Homeland Security. His questions were too specific and his familiarity with jumper-related access patterns was too precise for him to be what he was claiming to be.
Roland Cox. The Paladin operative. Here before Jake, which was either excellent timing or a problem depending on how it developed.
Jake made the assessment in approximately three seconds and decided it was a manageable problem.
He walked up to the bank manager, who turned from Roland with the relieved expression of someone who had been in a difficult conversation and had just been given a reason to exit it.
"Agent Lancelot," Jake said, offering his credentials. "Financial crimes. We received the notification this morning." He looked at Roland with the professionally neutral expression of one law enforcement representative acknowledging another. "I wasn't aware Homeland Security had an interest in bank robberies."
Roland looked at him. The recognition was not immediate — they'd spoken in the field office two days ago, but Jake had been in civilian clothes then, and the FBI suit changed the presentation considerably. It took Roland approximately four seconds to make the connection.
His expression, when he made it, was carefully controlled.
"Interagency cooperation," Roland said. "We follow certain patterns."
"Of course," Jake said pleasantly. He turned to the bank manager. "I need to establish a complete security perimeter and conduct a full examination of the vault. I'll also need all security footage from the past seventy-two hours and access to the vault's sensor logs." He paused. "Has anyone else accessed the scene before us?"
"Local police, and—" the manager glanced at Roland, "—the Department of Homeland Security."
"Right." Jake looked at Roland with the expression of a colleague who had a mild professional concern to raise. "I wasn't briefed on a joint operation. Are your people still on-site?"
"I'm the only one here," Roland said.
"Then we should coordinate," Jake said. "After I've completed the initial assessment." He gripped the bank manager's shoulder and steered him firmly toward the door. "Sir, I'm going to need you to step outside the perimeter. My team will have questions for you, but not until we've secured the scene."
The manager, who had been wanting to be somewhere else for the past forty minutes, needed no further encouragement and was through the front door in ten seconds.
Jake's team — six people the Red Queen had arranged through a combination of legitimate temporary contracts and very convincing impersonation of Bureau HR processes — moved into the bank behind him with the practiced efficiency of people who had been briefed thoroughly before arriving.
Jake turned back to Roland.
They looked at each other across the bank's marble lobby with the mutual assessment of two people who had already had one conversation they'd both found useful and were determining whether a second one was possible or whether they'd moved into adversarial territory.
"You found the genetic data I provided useful," Jake said, keeping his voice low enough that the nearest officer couldn't follow it.
"I'm considering it," Roland said, which from a Paladin operative was approximately as close to yes as the ideology permitted.
"Then consider this," Jake said. "The person who robbed this vault is a jumper. You want to find him for your reasons. I want to find him for mine. Our reasons don't overlap in ways that create conflict." He met Roland's eyes. "Work the scene together. We'll both get what we came for."
Roland was quiet for a moment.
"The vault access pattern," he said finally. "What's your read?"
Jake looked toward the vault corridor. "He came in through the back wall, took what he could identify quickly, and left through the ceiling. Probably spent under ninety seconds inside." He paused. "He's not practiced yet. The selections were impulsive — cash, some jewelry from the safe deposit section. Someone who knew what they were doing would have been more systematic."
Roland nodded slowly. "Consistent with a new activation."
"Which means he'll do it again," Jake said. "Probably soon. New activations tend to test the ability repeatedly once they understand it works."
"We'll want to be in position when that happens."
"Agreed," Jake said.
They walked toward the vault together, and the bank's security team watched two federal agents who were not entirely what they appeared to be conduct an investigation into a robbery that had been committed by a teenager who was currently sitting in a hotel room across town, counting money and trying to decide what to do next.
Outside, the Red Queen's voice came through Jake's earpiece with the quiet efficiency of a system that was tracking seventeen simultaneous data streams and hadn't found any of them particularly challenging.
"David is currently online, searching for properties in Rome," she said.
"Rome," Jake said, under his breath.
"He appears to be planning a vacation."
Jake looked at the vault's back wall — solid steel, no damage, the material as intact as it had been before David had walked through it like it wasn't there.
"Keep watching him," Jake said. "And flag every bank in Boston that doesn't have a jumper-specific security upgrade."
"That's all of them," the Red Queen said.
"Then we'll be busy," Jake said, and turned his attention back to the vault.
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