On Astral Tides: From Humble Freelancer To Astral Emperor

Side Eighty-Three – Adam White, Director of the NSA, Paranormal Branch

“Director White, we have the up-to-date figures on the black cats.” Files were passed over by the sharply-dressed African-American woman who was his under-secretary, and Adam surveyed them curiously.

I see. The numbers seem to check out. To think there were so many of these cats on our own soil, lurking just below the surface. Adam sighed, running a hand through his sandy brown hair, his hazel eyes squinting at the report. “It’s amazing how many people use their phones and the internet carelessly, isn’t it? Still, it makes our jobs easier. And that would be nice for change. With the election coming up and the President throwing his weight around… well, fortunately he doesn’t know about any of this.”

“Director!” the woman said, scandalised. “That is our President, show more respect!”

“Presidents come and go, but the State endures.” Adam disagreed, having a personal dislike for the brash President that made everything about him, not policies. “If he wins re-election, then he’ll have to be briefed. But for now, we need to get a handle on this situation.” And what a situation it is. Magical powers, another parallel dimension. It sounds like a fever dream from the CIA and their Stargate Project. No, only this one is real… “Anyway, are we keeping surveillance on these targets?” he indicated the new ninety-seven names on the list, taking their tally to somewhere around three thousand domestically, and seven hundred internationally.

“Of course, though it is stretching our agents thin. Even with help from the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Military, monitoring so many is straining our resources. And… accidents… happen.”

“Yes. They do.” He agreed sourly.

“We have the latest reports from China as well. They make grim reading.” She continued, handing over another file.

Looking at the next set of highly-classified documents, Adam felt a headache coming on. “All dead huh? They may be deep-cover agents, but even so, they were US citizens and patriots. Still, what information they did manage to smuggle out was a prize worthy of their sacrifice. I’d say they all deserve the Medal of Honour, but only a handful of Congress are aware of the situation, so I’m afraid their heroics will have to go unrewarded, at least for now.”

“It doesn’t make sense.” She said, shaking her head. “From what little information we got back, it seems that the CCP is leading a massive purge. To remove so many assets at a time like this…”

“Well, they value loyalty over potentially loose cannons.” Adam disagreed. “I think they have a saying, don’t they? Kill the chicken to scare the monkey. Now not only those who avoided this purge feel pressured to stay in line, it’s also a message to foreign powers like us, to keep our noses out of their business. Besides…” he observed, rubbing at his aching temples. “… it isn’t like we haven’t been guilty of the same.” His gaze strayed to a laptop, where the truly secret intelligence was kept. The device didn’t even have internet functionality or hardware installed, and the encryption was the best the NSA could use, cutting edge quantum encryption. It would take either a quantum computer, or some sort of insane genius to hack it.

“You mean?” she asked, a touch awed and also fearful.

“Yes, the Vermillion list.” Adam, surprisingly enough, was a keen wargamer, and in the corner of his office a display case rested, with row upon row of neatly painted figures and tanks arrayed there. Not that I have had much time to play recently. Since August, I’ve been working non-stop. I’ve barely had time to see my wife and kids, never mind time for hobbies. Still, as a proud American, he had always identified with the human faction of that wargame, and with the Inquisition in particular. After all, I am in the same business, making hard, dirty choices, my hands filthy, all for the good of everyone. If only the American public and the politicians understood that…

“So, anyway…” she didn’t want to think about the contents of the list, and who could blame her, as the information contained within was disturbing, and borderline unconstitutional. Borderline. Hardly, but in times of crisis we need to be bold.

“… the deal with Japan for the F-22 Raptors is done. but the Department of Defence is still kicking up a stink. Handing over such advanced fighter jets to another nation, even an allied one, goes against every policy we have had until now. And we are selling them a dozen at barely break even.”

“Well, we fucked up, plain and simple. And on the back foot, what could we do?” Adam shook his aching head, pulling open the laptop containing the Vermillion list. In addition to quantum encryption, it needed passwords, retinal and thumb scans, and a little extra secret to unlock. As it blinked on, he entered a few characters, and a profile was displayed.

“Akio Moonstone Oshiro.” The names were in American order. “Priority Rank: Vermillion. Threat Rank: Vermillion.”

“Double Vermillion.” She gasped, shocked. She was long used to Adam’s foibles when it came to classifying things, so the Vermillion/Magenta/Violet/Indigo/Black system wasn’t anything she didn’t understand. Even so, she was stunned. “Is he really so important.”

“Well, he was Magenta and Indigo before.” Adam sighed. “From the intel we got from that Private Military Contractor via the DoD, it seemed like he knew a lot, but wasn’t that strong. Indigo for sure. Our assets should have been able to take him.” On a button press another profile popped up.

“Shaeula Tu Shae Dannan. Priority Rank: Vermillion. Threat Rank: Magenta.” Unlike Akio’s profile, which had a lot of data the NSA had managed to hack, including family records, college history, and phone records, which had yielded some interesting information, Shaeula had almost no information listed about her. They were not even sure of her country of origin.

“The Japanese are wise to us, and we can’t use our satellite intercepts or tap the internet so freely anymore, now that they’ve put countermeasures in place. If we get caught out messing with them again, well, the several billion we’ve ended up paying out in this incident will look like nothing, and we can’t really afford to upset allied nations right now, not when the situation is so grave.” He clicked through more of the files, listing several Vermillion Rank Chinese nationals, as well as a Brazilian who they had tried to capture but likewise failed on, though at least this time the Brazilian government hadn’t been involved, as he was the self-styled ‘king of the favelas’ and was beneath their notice, despite the large organisation he was forming, to rival the gangs of Rio de Janeiro.

“Then there’s this mess. Eleanor Elizabeth Diana Windsor. Priority Rank: Violet. Threat Rank: Violet. A princess…” he snorted at that, America being a republic. “… and apparently quite popular. There’s no way we can make a move on her. Still, our embassy noticed some strange behaviour at parties, and from that…” he brought up more files, including one particularly strange one.

“Mary Stuart. This girl is a mystery, and she doesn’t seem to use the internet or any sort of mobile device, so our ability to gather intelligence on her is limited. It was considered worth an attempt to bring her in, and we even sent one of our own people… but our agents disappeared without trace, him too. We have to assume them dead, and her threat rating was buffed to Vermillion, but…”

“Do I want to know all this?” the under-secretary said, pouting.

“Of course. After all, you may be my under-secretary, but in actuality you are second in command of this whole branch of the NSA, Viola. You’ve been working your way up the ladder for years, eager to break the glass ceiling and prove those wrong who said a woman couldn’t make it. Now you have the job, why are you so sour?”

“Because I expected to end up in the normal NSA.” She complained with a sigh.

“Well, get used to it, this is the new normal. You’ve seen the videos of the tests our soldiers ran, and it’s terrifying. Even if you discount the supernatural abilities they have, their physical strength and speed are far above the norm, intellect too, though there seems to be substantial variances between each individual.”

“I’ve seen them, but I hardly believe them. The military scientists are going nuts. I hear several have been sent to rehab.” She sighed. “So anyway, that reminds me, you have a meeting at two, with the top brass from the Pentagon, Military, CIA, FBI and DARPA. They’ll be annoyed if you are late again, sir.”

“Well, is anyone as busy as I am?” he complained, walking over to his cabinet and taking out one of his miniatures, his favourite, the one that he imagined was him, battling in the far future for the good of humanity, doing whatever was needed, whatever the cost. “They should be grateful I even show up. So help me, if they bitch about the F-22’s or the other concessions, I’m going to send them out on a mission to secure a Vermillion Rank target, see how well they do. Damn, if only I could.” Putting back the figure he shut the cabinet. “It’s nice to dream, but this is reality.” Returning to the laptop he brought up the target that he really wanted to talk about today, an American, no less.

“Joseph Young: Priority Rank: Magenta: Threat Rank: Indigo.”

“That’s the one we failed to capture with the army right? There were a lot of civilian casualties, it was hell to cover up.” Viola noted, sounding detached at the deaths. As well she might, she took the lead in hiding that little fuck up.

“Yes. But he knows things, and while he appears to have little to no combat skills, his abilities… well, a lot of our Senators and Congressmen are getting old and so someone with such phenomenal healing abilities… you get it, right?”

“I do.” She snorted, disgusted. “Still, we must have a rough idea where he is? We have phone taps, listening posts, satellites…”

“It seems our good friend here doesn’t use phones or the internet, much like Mary Stuart. And as for satellite imaging, it seems he is either lucky enough or clever enough to avoid our scans. Shit. I’m getting hassle about this. Well, just do your best, see if you can ferret out his hiding spot, and then the army will move in. This time we’ll send in a few of our people too, to make sure there’s no escape.”

“Poor man. To do that to a man of the cloth.” Viola shook her head. “All right, I’ll get right on it. What about the rest of the team?”

“Keep up extracting as much information from the phone and internet records of the newly located targets, find out their friends, family, business connections, anything. And if they have any foreign links, we need to know yesterday!” No more mess-ups. We failed in Japan, China and Brazil, and our reach in Russia, India, Pakistan and other key countries is insufficient. At least on home soil, we can make things work…

As Viola saluted, Adam’s mind was already on the upcoming meeting. Taking the laptop, he held in a sigh, his gaze going back to the cabinet where he kept his miniatures. Sacrifice the few for the many. It isn’t exactly the American way, but the times, they are a-changin’, as the song goes…

********

“… is outrageous!” the four-star general of the air force was close to screaming. “F-22’s are ours! What if the technology leaks? This is rank incompetence, possibly even treason!”

“Calm down.” Adam sighed, wishing he was anywhere else. “We had little choice. The Japanese have been asking to purchase more of our top-end weaponry for years, and we couldn’t put them off forever. If that, a new trade deal which will cost us a few hundred million a year in lost tariffs, and a billion or so of debt forgiveness to cover the cost of the aircraft is all we suffer, than I say we got out of this mess quite cheaply. It isn’t like it would be any better if we gave them their citizens back now, would it?”

“And who caused this mess?” Gina, the hard-boiled female head of the CIA declared. “It was the incompetence of our military and a failure by our intelligence services that allowed this to happen. Still, if it can be solved by money, it isn’t truly worth getting worked up over.”

“I apologise for the intelligence failures.” Adam hated to apologise, but in this case it was warranted. Information he received from the field had been spotty, it seemed, and instead of taking a safer route, such as bribery or putting pressure on the target by way of his family and friends, they had assumed a quick, clean in-and-out strike would suffice, as it had several times before in Japan. “Still, it was impossible to expect that he would be one of the few who could handle a spec-ops team. You’ve seen the figures.”

“That’s right.” A young woman in ratty lab-coat and bubble spectacles said, her dirty, ash-blonde hair pulled into an untidy ponytail. “Out of the two hundred and eleven current test subjects… err, I mean… assets...” she changed her words as she received a number of glares. “… that we have in our possession, only perhaps ten would be able to handle a full unit. As you know…”

Here we go. Adam groaned internally. Christina Bakker was one of DARPA’s finest, and was now in charge of what was called Project Star Mirror, in reference to the CIA’s laughable Project Stargate, and the fact that the world was reflected in this other land, as proven by numerous testimonies. But she does like to explain again and again. Oh well, I guess I have time to rally my own thoughts…

“We can classify the assets into three types, roughly. Physical types, who have significant enhancement to their strength, speed, IQ, durability and more. The strongest of these seem able to shrug off small-calibre ammunition, though testing…” her face fell. “Well, there was that accident.”

“Calling the death of one of our finest, most loyal soldiers an accident is an insult.” The Director of the FBI snapped, looking sick. “Pushing too far and too fast…”

“Look, I get it.” Christina said, in what she probably thought was a soothing manner, but just showed her lack of empathy. “With both your son and daughter being an asset, beating odds of ten billion to one, no wonder you are rattled. That’s why we are keeping the dangerous tests to foreign nationals, and those US citizens who lack the moral fibre to contribute in other ways.”

Her cold words glossed over the fact that several US prisoners had awakened to powers, as well as gang members, crooked businessmen and other such troublesome people. They had been gathered up where possible, by arrest, or black bag snatch squads, sometimes done by PMC’s for additional deniability. Most of the Government was in the dark about the exact actions that were being taken, due largely to the political instability at the head of government. Hopefully the election will lead to a definitive result, and we can start getting things done again…

“This is still skirting the limits of decency.” Gina complained. “That’s why we couldn’t repatriate those Japanese when we were on the back foot. They are alive, sure, but… their treatment made Guantanamo Bay look humane. And while we are not part of the International Criminal Court, it’s still a bad look, what we did.”

“We have to make sacrifices.” Christina said piously. “Better those than loyal, good people like your son and daughter, right Chris?” she said, annoyingly informal, and the head of the FBI, Christopher, scowled, not dignifying her with an answer.

“Anyway. Then we have the effect types. They have one or more abilities which defy science. Conservation of energy, mass, the laws of thermodynamics..” she was blushing now, her breath coming in hot gasps, and it was a disgusting sight to see. “… none of those seem to matter! Some can shoot fire, or heal their wounds, or even create permanent items! It’s amazing! But even they are nothing compared to the mystery types. The most exciting of all!” she was practically drooling now. “Manipulation of things that should have no concrete existence! Probability, for one. That test subject… err, good citizen from Las Vegas, we’ve run test after test, coins, dice, cards, random number generators. The data is solid! And there’s more…”

She continued to talk, until she finally ran out of breath, winding down. “… and so it seems that their abilities are slowly growing, except for a few outliers, which I call growth types, so for example, an effect-growth type would be someone whose ability grows. Say, their fire burns hotter, lasts longer, covers a wider scale. Oh, how I wish I could see this mysterious mirror world they speak of, it would be…”

“Thank you for the explanation, Miss Christina.” Adam broke in, heading her off from another repetitive lecture. “We are getting off topic. What matters is… well, you’ve all seen the reports. Information we have gathered from each person tells the same story. Beings that we would have called mythical, have somehow descended and picked out people, and in one notable case, an animal…” I still can’t believe it. A damn crocodile was called in breathing fire like a dragon. I thought it a prank at first, but I’ve seen the footage. It’s being kept under lock and key at the Pentagon right now, and while it cannot speak, it seems capable of understanding us to some extent…

“… and warn that unless we prepare for an unspecified upcoming disaster, the world is doomed. Well, there is no way we can stand idly by and let America fall. Three hundred million Americans demand our best, ladies and gentlemen. To that end, a few minor issues such as a few fighter jets is nothing. We are behind the times, I am afraid. China moved first. We are playing catch-up.”

“Yes.” One general said, frowning. “Intelligence told us that in July some sort of commotion was happening there. We had hoped it was a coup against the CCP, but no such luck.”

“Right, and we didn’t start noticing what was happening until August.” Adam agreed. “Most people who received these divine visitations… well, they kept it to themselves. Most still are, though there are some exceptions.”

Christoper agreed, sighing bitterly “Yes, my son and daughter only revealed it when they came up on your radar, Adam. I’m still pissed off you had the temerity to tap my family. That’s a national security issue!”

“Well, we are using AI to crawl the data for keywords and matches. We’ve gathered what look like dozens of variants of the same terminology, but some come up again and again. Chakra. Astral. Boundary. Cultivation. Qi. Silver Cord. Aether. Ether. Anchor. Territory. Hallowed Ground.” He looked around at the great and the good, who were in charge of America’s response to what was possibly the greatest crisis they ever faced. “Anyone talking about these goes on the list for further in-depth analysis. Doing it that way, and searching for any other keywords we gather, we widen the net, and now we have identified a great number of our fellow Americans. The question is… recruitment.”

Everyone lives online nowadays. Those people who think the Government microchips them and avoids hospitals for that reason are more than happy to have their every move tracked by carrying a mobile phone. Idiots. Still, that works to our benefit so I shouldn’t complain…

“China is doing it. We got little but scraps from our dead agents, but news of this Ministry for Managing Divine Mysteries got through to us.” Gina allowed. “I think it’s time to start bringing people other than the undesirables in. We already have all of those in the army, CIA, FBI and related agencies in the fold, helping us research and control this new phenomenon. As well as those who we have extracted, both at home and abroad.”

“I hate letting China force our hand.” Adam complained, but he was in agreement, as were most of the hawkish military personnel. “Sorry Christopher, but we’ll need your kids to help us too. Don’t worry, we won’t let Christina near them.” Christoper and Christina, they could be a double act…

“Oh, but I’m curious as to which type they are… hey, don’t look at me like that!” Christina shuddered as she was subjected to a murderous glare. “I won’t run any experiments on them. I have other avenues of study. But I will need to ask them the standard questions. The more we know!”

The more we know, indeed. It’s a shame that we never did bring in that Akio guy. He tripped a lot of the keyword flags, and seemed to know much more than he let on. That Shaeula is suspicious too. There seem to be… discrepancies… in the little data we pulled on her. Well, cutting loose that PMC isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, and it seems like they are moving to Japan, those that didn’t suddenly quit. At the end of the day, they are an American mercenary outfit, so if we call, they’ll support us. Might as well let it slide… “Do you think we should open up information sharing with our allies?” Adam asked, and Gina frowned.

“You mean Japan, the UK, France and the others?” she asked. “I doubt they know much more than us. It seems China are the ones in the know.”

“Even so, it might be worth it. Assuming we don’t give too much away.” Adam had a feeling. “Still, I suppose it can wait until we’ve gathered up all our citizens. Who knows, if they can mess with probabilities and such abstract concepts, surely we’ll find one or two who have an ability to understand this other world?”

“Yes, yes.” Christina agreed. “An information cheat, I believe they call them in stories.” She giggled. “If I was chosen to inherit power, that would surely be my gift! These gods have no taste, overlooking me!”

No, I would say it’d be an evil god indeed who would gift that mad scientist any knowledge. After all, it was knowledge that led to the exile from Eden, and curiosity killed the cat. The laptop screen was on a list page, detailing all the three thousand and seven hundred individuals who were classified as black cats, at home and abroad. Black cats bring ill fortune, so it’s said, but these cats… well, they will either be the key to saving the world, or dooming it. I wish I knew which…

“Knowledge is power.” He said, closing the lid, shutting away the list. “We have some, and need more. All right, start bringing everyone in. We’ve observed long enough. I fear the day will come when a single one of these people might be worth far more to us than a few F-22 fighters…” For now, even the strongest of them can still be easily killed by enough firepower, as the accident proved. But is that going to last forever? If they can grow stronger, is that process endless? Will we one day be facing superheroes, men and women of steel, with no kryptonite in sight? If so… even if America survives, it will never be the same again…