Cronen Chronicles: Resurrection

[Breaker]

This thread will contain explicit violent and sexual content, please read at your own discretion.

The room was a rectangular box with white walls and no windows. A distant yet hauntingly close keening filled every corner of the building. It gnawed at my soul like a rat sneaking under a fence. I heard distant voices and doors banging, an edge of hurry fringing each sound.

A lifetime had passed since I sat in a place like this. The polished leather chair swiveled soundlessly as I banged its mahogany arm against the matching table. It stirred the golden ballpoint pen that lay uncapped across a hundred year old oak's worth of documents.

It felt like a lifetime, but the date stamped next to each signature line read Thursday September 26, 2013.

Eight years since an experimental portal had dropped me into a medieval forest with a two hundred page notebook and a set of nunchucks. In that time I'd fought in earthen pits and atop coveted pedestals, sailed on frigid seas and hunted through frozen streets, climbed mountains and killed immortals. I'd buried lovers and won wars, stood among deities and dueled with demons till their fires flickered and died.

"Do you need me to read them for you?" The beautiful blonde seated across from me inquired. I might have lost myself in her full lips and lapis eyes if not for the strong citrus perfume covering her scent. She was all carefully controlled vitality, long locks bound in a bun behind her head, pantsuit pressed as if ironed to her body. She was all woman beneath that monogrammed mask.

"I'm fine, actually I learned three languages on-" she slammed her palms on the table so hard the pen jumped and rolled off. I moved my foot about a centimeter and caught the pen on my dark metal boot with a soft ting.

"You can't say anything about your mission until the release and waiver are signed at least." She sighed and shook her head almost apologetically, smoothing out her neatly tucked shirt before it could wrinkle. "Look, if you'd rather spend another day alone in here, I have twice this much paperwork sitting on my desk. But honestly I'd rather hear your story. You just have to sign." She picked up the pen's cap, emblazoned with the same logo as her jacket, and tapped two of the top pages.

My foot flicked and the pen jumped into my reaching hand. I signed smoothly above the bold typeface reading Joshua Cronen Agent 016573.

The spy across from me closed her mouth and blinked the shock from her eyes and smiled.

"My name is Victoria," she said, "and now that we're acquainted, please start with February 17th, 2005."

[Breaker]

"I need an answer first," I said, meeting her icy blue gaze with chips of hazel stone, "how did you bring me here?"

It was a double barreled question loaded with buckshot. When I'd materialized in their testing facility they'd thought me unconscious, near death, and I overheard them celebrating success. They'd intended to bring me back to Earth -- despite the fact I'd propelled myself there with considerable effort. I wondered if there could be a need for a force on both ends to tunnel through time and space, but that didn't explain how I'd originally traveled to Althanas. That portal had left me alone in the woods, leg trapped beneath a boulder.

Victoria did not blink or look away. A smile flitted from her lips to her eyes and ghosted shadows of dimples on her cheeks.

"Give me a year of your mission, and I'll answer a question." She touched the back of a broad broach clipped to the collar of her jacket and spoke softly, "Can we get some tea in here please?" She glanced up at me and mouthed the question. Green?

I shrugged expansively, the heavy muscles in my neck and back sighing as the shoulders rolled and loosened amongst a drumroll of pops.

"A pot of green and two mugs please. The Kenyan looseleaf." She smiled, so pleased with the minute elctronic device concealed within her broach. "So, take me back to that day. If you would." She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, palms on the table, listening eagerly.

I couldn't blame her. Of all the assignments the UCA had to hand out to new recruits, Debriefing Joshua Cronen must have been at the top of the wishlist. Although she'd already shown considerable aptitude and I didn't doubt her skills, I suspected the higher-ups had chosen her for her looks. The man who left Earth eight years earlier - Agent 016573, now deceased as far as I was concerned - would have taken the bait and bedded her inside a single day. But I'd grown wiser in my time on Althanas.

"Chief Medical Officer Barnaby Wells and Head Agent Genvieve Aneed oversaw the operation," I said, eyes meeting Victoria's gaze unwaveringly, voice neutral. "Although experiment would have been a better descriptor. The portal was generated and sustained successfully, but failed after I had passed through. Fortunately, I made it out unharmed."

Victoria's eager expression faltered and she blinked several times. I continued.

"After some initial difficulties I met and communicated with the locals and eventually became a successful bodyguard. My travels--"

"Stop." The energy had gone out of her. She placed her elbows on the table and pressed her eyelids to the heels of her palms, massaging her face before speaking from behind laced fingers. "We both know what you're doing Cronen. I'm not looking for a redacted black-file in spoken word." She leaned on her forearms and looked across at me, mascara slightly smudged. Finally, something about her was out of place. "I need details. What types of locals? What kind of technology did they have? Resources? You know what's important, now spill it."

I smiled. She had broken first, and it only took twenty hours. In a mental game of chess such as ours, the first player to lose calm and reveal intentions lost.

Somewhere in the humming angular building, an alarm blared.

[Breaker]

Through layers of drywall and insulation I heard running boots and shouting voices. The alarm blared like a foghorn for twenty seconds and then cut out, and the yelling and stomping got louder.

"Is that for us?" I asked, brow creased in concern.

Victoria snorted. "Whatever it is, our Tactical unit can handle it. Right now our job is to go over the last eight years of your life with a fine toothed comb." She smiled as the door opened. "That'll be our tea."

It wasn't. A man walked in and paced straight to her side, leaning down, whispering. He wore glasses and an expensive suit minus the jacket, white shirt dark with sweat on the armpits and small of the back. A computer technician, certainly, but from what I could tell geeks had moved up in the world. Eight years ago this guy would have been Victoria's subordinate, but the way he turned and walked out of the room without a glance at me suggested he was her boss.

"We're needed on the roof," she said grudgingly, each word requiring an effort to pronounce. "One of our drones was taken out by, according to its final video feed, a tidal wave." She shook her head and looked at me apprehensively. "A tidal wave two kilometers above sea level, in northern Ontario. I hope our techs are on crack."

I hadn't heard anything after one of our drones. But I got to my feet and walked to the door the sweaty man had left ajar, pulling it open for Victoria.

"Sorry," I said, "since when does the Canadian government employ drones for covert operations?"

"The project started last year, with maximum funding from Ottawa." She led me down a scarred cinderblock corridor and into a steel-railed stairwell. "We're actually getting resources from Russia and the U.S. and others... there's been international interest in controlling airspace around the poles. I can't say much officially, but I will tell you we've invested in a half dozen Lune Mark D drones." Her leather soled shoes were soft on the steps, even with the heel raised three inches. "French design. They're marketed "silent as the moon" and supposed to be hard to shoot down. Except by a tonne of water, I guess. Do you know anything about flying tidal waves?"

"I stayed away from the ocean as much as possible," I said. My black metal boots tinged softly with each upward stride. I felt like I'd been sucker punched by a titan. Techs outranking agents, drones patrolling Canada.. Nothing made sense. Nothing except the mysterious attack on the Underground Clandestine Agency's electronic watchdog. And that was what I'd been waiting for.

[Breaker]

The vaulted steel door banged open and my black metal boots scraped the building's gristly flattop. I drank the sunlight like warm tea and strode to the north-eastern corner.

The building was the tallest thing around. A commercial center, shopping and apparently the public library all lumped in to one. With office buildings occupying the top floors, belonging to the UCA. A residential neighborhood stretched several square blocks to the south and east, and straight easterly I spotted a bar and inn. Just like on Althanas. The faded wood-lettered sign named it The Winehouse.

Mountainous forest yawned to the north and west. Big boulders bulged up from beneath tree roots and tracks of land. Loam and pine needles settled in rain gullies and lined pathways that invaded the shadowy depths.

"There?" I said needlessly, pointing at a thin plume of acrid smoke that rose above the northern treeline.

Victoria nodded tersely. "They want you guarding the roof in case whatever took out the dro--"

I stopped listening as I slipped over the edge of the building. She might have yelled orders, maybe punched the walkie button on her broach and commanded troops to the ground. They would respond and as quickly and as efficiently as one could expect with deadly force as necessary.

And it wouldn't matter.

My boots clung to the concrete wall and I ran down the side like a two-legged spider. So much for all magic being negated on earth, I thought, but I haven't tried any of my own powers out.

As I neared the wide parking lot that bridged the cap between humanity and wild, I felt for the moisture in the air. It was there. But when I tried to cover the asphalt with a slippery layer of ice, nothing happened.

Interesting, I thought as I launched laterally at the empty lot. I didn't need the ice. The bottoms of my boots became slicker than a Canadian winter and I skated across the asphalt and dove into the woods.