APERTURE

  Unbeknownst to her, in her fitful sleep, Tabitha’s hand pawed at the irksome gleam in her left eye. The more it happened, the more the patch of unvarite resting over it was pushed up and off the bandage it covered. More and more, until the gap was just large enough to let the sun through.

  As the daylight slipped into her ruined left eye, the iridescent glint spilled out into the day.

  ~~~

  Elsewhere in Hume, a beam of light flickered into Agent Hawke’s left eye from the rearview mirror of the SUV. He tried to blink it off, and adjust the angle of the mirror, but it was too late. The afterimage floated in his vision, like a tiny, glinting inkblot.

  “These advisors, man, I swear,” Agent Hawke groaned, rubbing one eye, while he watched the road with the other. “Alpha priority? Have you ever even heard of that shit?”

  His partner, Agent Cobb, sat in the passenger seat, silently watching the fence posts slip by.

  “Rich?” Agent Hawke asked. Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s no big deal,” he told him. “It’s why I have the camera. Shit happens.”

  Agent Cobb did not reply. He did not say anything the entire drive.

  It was not until they pulled into the short, gravel driveway of a house not far from Gander Ranch, that he finally said something.

  “Louisville Horror?” Agent Cobb asked, eyes locked on the front door of the home. He was twisting the handle of the bat in his hand hard enough for it to squeak. When Agent Hawke did not reply, he turned to question him. The look of actual horror on the driver’s face made him rethink what he said. He smiled, when he landed on the answer. “Louisville Horror with a Big Redux.” And then he popped his door open, and slid out, bat in tow.

  Agent Hawke cut the SUV off, and rushed to join him at the front of the vehicle. “Hey! What are ya doin’, huh?” He got a grip on Agent Cobb’s arm, just in time to stop him from marching up to the house. “We just need a keyhole, man.”

  Agent Cobb yanked his arm free, to keep moving. “And I just need to blow off some steam.”

  “They’re civilians,” Agent Hawke argued, a step behind him, on his approach. His voice fell into a whisper, when they reached the porch. “Just ask. Flash your badge, and ask. Do your job.”

  Ignoring his partner, the seething agent pulled open the glass storm door, then used the end of the baseball bat to tap on the red door behind it. When he spotted the peephole, he hid his weapon behind him. Trying his best to look nonchalant, he managed to look more suspicious than ever, standing there, with his work suit and locked jaw.

  Pulling the camcorder from his pocket, Agent Hawke flipped open the screen on the side. Resting his finger over the RECORD button, he sighed heavily at what was about to occur.

  It only took a moment for a middle aged woman to answer.

  Throwing the door to the side, she stood there, blocking the entrance, with her body, while she waited for the two agents to state their business. In the kitchen behind her, her husband sat at the table, eyeing them.

  “Can I help you, hon?”

  Agent Hawke’s focus flooded into the house, as he carefully framed his shot. It would only work if his subjects were in frame, and getting it right was the only way he would sleep tonight.

  When it was just right, the camcorder beeped, and all hell broke loose.

  With a sadistic grin on his face, and the wooden bat in his left hand, Agent Cobb swung his right leg back into his batting stance. Next, he brought his weapon up from behind his leg. Taking it with both hands, he put the baseball bat over his right shoulder, and yelled into the house.

  “Baseball bats don’t kill people! PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE!!”

  In her confusion, the woman had no time to react to the swing.

  Agent Cobb had practiced methodically at the batting cages, for half a year, after he was first assigned VIO-714. It was a replica Babe Ruth Louisville Slugger, that was misprinted Louieville Sunder. With all his boiled over anger behind it, the bat whistled as it cleaved the air.

  Once the tip of it connected with her sternum, the wooden baseball bat converted most of the woman into a shotgun blast of red and white liquid. The force of the grand slam ripped through the house, like a cannonball, carrying the woman and other debris into her husband, and doing much the same to him, as it passed through. Left behind, his bottom half slumped onto the floor, while the rest of him, intermingling with his wife and possessions, exited the sliding glass door on the other side of the house.

  “Shit, Richard,” Agent Hawke said, taking a step back. “I’ll—”

  “SHIT YEAH!” Agent Cobb hooted and hollered at the carnage.

  “—let you get the scan.”

  He took both ends of the bat in his hands, held it up over his head, then flexed with it.

  “FUCK! YES! WOOOOO!!!”

  ~~~

  “Should we even be waiting for him?” Agent Cobb sat in the passenger seat, with his door propped open. He had open the glove compartment, and was now cleaning the blood off the bat, using tissues he had found inside. “Didn’t you say it was just ‘scan the keyhole, send the file’ and we can get back after that bitch?”

  Since his partner’s outburst, Agent Hawke had been mostly quiet, letting CCR fill the silence. The camcorder was still running in his hand, and he was on minute twenty of filming the devastation. VIO-1983, a small handheld camcorder designed by Apogee Labs had forty-eight minutes of free space to record with, before it would delete the footage, and render it useless. With each passing minute, the weight of undoing what his partner had done pressed further into his forehead.

  “You sent it to the right place? That janitor address on the intranet.”

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  “Yep,” Agent Cobb said, poker face failing him on the setup. It cracked completely into a manic smile. “Directly to the sanitation department.”

  Agent Hawke groaned. “Shuddup, Rich.”

  The crazed laughter that followed further nourished the growing worry he felt over his partner’s state of mind.

  Thirty-nine minutes had passed on the camcorder, before someone finally exited through the broken entryway of the house. Agent Hawke squinted in disbelief at the nerdy looking man walking toward them. Something about the title advisor, and all the rumors that followed it, had not prepared him for someone wearing glasses, and a hairline that had begun to escape him at such a young age. It was made all the worse by his ghost white expression turning into vomit, not far from the house. As he doubled over, a line of blood could be seen, running down his neck, from his left earlobe. At its source, a small golden hoop earring dangled in a fresh piercing. That’s AB5? he wondered, brain practically tripping over his bafflement.

  Not long after, another man more suited to the name Lord Tredici, fifth member of the advisory board followed. He was shorter, and far older than the first man. A full head of graying hair, and more distinguished for it, he had overdressed, in fashionable green and white clothing, the way only an advisor would, when out in the field. The Casual Lord of Disaster.

  They sat there and watched AB5 check on the man. He helped him gather himself, then offered a handkerchief he pulled from his breast pocket. The nerdy man chose to wipe the puke from his mouth using his own sleeve, instead. When they were done fussing over each other, like two old women, they finally made their way to the SUV.

  “Are they serious?” Agent Cobb said, stifling a laugh.

  The advisor reached his door first, behind Agent Hawke in the driver’s seat, and immediately began questioning them, the moment he got it open.

  “What on Earth happened here? Dio mio! I asked you to find a door for me to use. Were you threatened? How could this happen?!”

  It continued through him climbing into the SUV, and slamming the door behind him. The other man was not far behind, getting in on the other side, and taking the seat behind Agent Cobb.

  Lord Tredici scoffed. “Uffa! My shoes! I think I stepped in someone, you fools!” A flurry of Italian spilled out from under his breath. “Where are they hiring from? The asylum? Bah! I ask you to do one thing. Alpha priority. And this happens…”

  At his wits end, Agent Hawke started the engine, then held up the camcorder, so that they all could see the screen on its side. He slid his finger over the REWIND button and pressed it.

  After the beep, a loud uncrashing noise could be heard tearing from the back of the house to the front, and, suddenly, the entry of the house reverted to its fixed state.

  What was, just a moment before, little more than a smear through her own house, returned to the woman she once was, before being Louieville Sunder'd. She snapped back into wholeness holding the doorknob to her newly remade front door.

  “Wha—,” the geek gagged, again, “—what the fuck?”

  Relief washed over Agent Hawke as he pocketed the variant object. He put the SUV into reverse. What he was dreading happening only took a few more moments to occur, when the woman fell into the frame of the door, and began shrieking.

  He could still hear her wailing, long after they had left.

  ~~~

  Agent Hawke stopped the vehicle at the start of Gander Ranch’s driveway.

  “Where, exactly?” he asked, sitting forward to look for an answer in the dirt in front of them.

  “Don’t remember,” Agent Cobb answered, despite not being who was asked. “You rewound me.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Agent Hawke glanced over his shoulder. “A-B-Fi—Lord Tredici? Any ideas?”

  Lord Tredici leaned into the front, in order to look out of the windshield. After a quick assessment, he pointed at something in front of them. “A damaged fence seems like a good place to start, yes?” He began exiting, sans answer, then turned to talk to Agent Hawke through the headrest of his seat. “Shut it off,” he said, squeezing the agent’s shoulder.

  Goddamnit, he touched me, Agent Hawke thought, as fought the urge to lean into the steering wheel, in order to get away from the tan hand. He had never met the advisor before, but the rumors of the bad luck that followed him carried far through the foundation. There was no telling how the object’s variance worked, except through testing, or having it tell you. With VIOs, though, activating through touch was usually the first assumption, and why the first rule of agent club was: no touching. Guess I’m screwed.

  He took an extra moment joining the other three at the mouth of the garage, trying to shake off the feeling of tarnish. They had formed a triangle around a spot in the center of the entry, and Agent Hawke made it a square, when he reached them.

  “...won’t happen again.” Agent Cobb’s retelling of two losses to the woman variant, that he hardly remembered, did little to help his mood. “Bitch,” he said under his breath. Whatever steam was blown off at the last house had seemingly returned to him with the press of REWIND. “Your sister, though, you said?”

  “Estranged,” the man dressed like a teacher said. His voice became nearly imperceptible. “But yeah…”

  “She’s your sister?” Agent Hawke asked.

  “Was, anyway.” Agent Cobb spit a burst of laughter. “Variant’s a variant.”

  The brother’s jaw tightened. He tried to maintain his poker face, but his glance of a glare at the agent was not lost behind the glare of his glasses.

  Brother? What the hell are we doing here? Agent Hawke wondered, as he tried to work out the motivations of the advisor and the man he had in tow. “Sir—Lord Tredici, sir, what—”

  Lord Tredici flailed his hand around in front of him, in an attempt to clear the board of conversation. “What is your plan to retrieve the object?” He pointed down the driveway. “You said she’s holed up in the house?” His eye closed, and his finger lifted further up, as he aimed at the broken roof in the distance. “How do we—”

  Agent Hawke tried not to let his suspicions show. “All due respect, sir,” he interjected, “but who said? We haven’t had a chance to reassess, since our first encounter with the variant object. She—It could be anywhere by now.” He pointed at the setting sun. “That was midday. It’s been hours.”

  “Well!” With a flourish of his hand, Lord Tredici let out a mad laugh. “Who said?” He looked around the group of them. An accusatory finger launched at Agent Cobb. “He said!” A questioning look flittered across his face, then shifted to a confident smile. “While you were wasting our sunlight there,” his finger jabbed at the SUV, “your partner shared his theory with us.”

  “Theory?”

  “Y-yeah,” Agent Cobb confirmed, with a flicker of gold in his eye. “I think we should check the house.”

  Makes sense, Agent Hawke thought to himself. He shrugged off his dubious intuition. “Alright, fine.”

  “We think her variance allows her to return to this location specifically,” Lord Tredici said, pointing at the disheveled dirt between them. “And so she must be using the house as a refuge, yes?”

  “Okay.”

  Agent Cobb nodded. “Sounds right to me.”

  Using his hand as a map, Lord Tredici slid his finger pointlessly around the palm of his hand, in tandem with his explanation. “You and I,” he said, nodding at Agent Hawke, “will go down to the home, and flush the rat from its hole. It stands to reason it will use its variance.” He gestured at Agent Cobb and the nerd, and smiled. “And these two gentlemen will wait here for it, and—”

  “BANG!” Agent Cobb interrupted, going through the motions of a swing. Visualizing the imaginary ball, he pointed at it all the way over the horizon. “Hooooomer!” He exhaled roughly, simulating the stadium’s cheers. “And the crowd goes wild!”

  Lord Tredici continued, with a shrug and a golden chuckle. “He seems eager.”

  Agent Hawke wanted to argue, but something about Lord Tredici’s casualness caused the apprehension to drain out of him.

  “We will wait for nightfall,” the casual lord said. Then, suddenly, he remembered something. “Oh! You there, batboy,” he waved his hand at Agent Cobb. “Give your service weapon to Dr. Hale here.”

  “My service weapon?”

  “Your sidearm,” he confirmed, pointing at the man’s hip. “Since you’re already armed, and the doctor is not.”

  “Oh, right.” Agent Cobb was already fumbling for his pistol, before he ever thought about it. “Of course,” he said, handing it to the hesitant doctor. “I’m not sure why I even carry the thing.”

  As prepared as they were going to be, the group waited for the sun to fall further behind the treeline.

  ~~~

  When twilight passed into darkness, and the last ray of sunlight had disappeared, the wandering gleam slipped back beneath the unvarite eyepatch, through the bandage, and back into the eye it refracted from.