The Law of Averages

Book 2: Chapter 41: Seeker

Dan stood on the corner of Bering street, dressed in a jacket, jeans, and work boots. It was the evening now, and the sun had dipped low enough in the sky that downtown's great skyscrapers cast the streets in shadow. The dark didn't bother him; if anything, it made his job easier.

Dan watched, through hooded gaze, the ruins of the former FBI field office. Still abandoned, the near-fortress now looked like any other vacant building. Some of the police tape that had cocooned the entrance must have blown free, revealing the dark innards to any who cared to look. None did. This place was cursed, as far as Austin' citizens were concerned. Already, it was nothing more than a distant memory.

Nothing had gone like Dan had assumed it would. Rather than federal scrutiny falling down upon Coldeyes' Crew, followed by swift decapitation, the FBI had backed away like frightened cats. They'd buried away the evidence of their failures in a shallow grave, blatantly ignored their own bloodied lips, and made for the hills. What threat had consumed their attention so thoroughly that they would ignore such a blatant attack? What loomed in the distance that they knew about, and others did not?

It was enough to make a man paranoid.

Dan had no answers. With any luck, the feds would handle whatever had cropped up, and he'd never need to even need to find out the truth. He had more than enough on his plate here and now. Restlessness had driven him here, restlessness and a need for action. It was the only thing he could think of to do; the only place he could imagine being useful. Once the idea had come to him, he'd become fixated upon it.

What if he could track the Natural? At the very least, he could find out where they'd emerged from the sewers. Dan would be in no small amount of trouble if he were caught doing this, even if he found something, but he thought Cornelius would understand. Besides, he wouldn't be caught. He was wearing a hood—he drew it tighter around his head—and he could teleport! What could possibly go wrong?

Dan sent his veil skittering across the concrete street, towards the blasted remnants of the field office lobby. He tried his best to remember where the massive Natural had once trod, and extended tendrils to taste at the ground that had seen his passing. He hadn't been looking for it during the battle, his concerns had lay mostly with the whereabouts of his enemies rather than the makeup of what lay beneath them, but in this calm moment, he saw it.

The signs were subtle, like tracking someone through a forest by a trail of broken leaves. It was nothing visible, nothing so simple. Dan's veil was the key, sensing the subtle differences in material, and reporting it back with what might have been confusion. Not-concrete, his veil whispered as it touched a patch of craggy ground. Yet it clearly was. He could see it with his eyes and, were he brave enough to risk exposure, kneel down and touch it with his hands.

Not-concrete, his power insisted. It knew the feel of cement and gravel and sand. It could feel where the ratios varied, where the mix had varied in subtle ways. But this was different. What it felt was not the ingredients of concrete, but rather something else entirely. Something unique. Something not quite twisted, yet not quite right.

It reminded Dan of the cargo trailer. Back on that fateful day, before anyone had realized the danger, he'd sent his power crawling along the back of the wrecked eighteen wheeler, searching for flammable objects. It had stalled out in the walls, reporting a confusing mix of elements that he'd never felt before. At the time, he'd assumed it was some kind of meta-metal, perhaps forged by a Genius who had been hyper fixated on trucking, or something else equally inane.

Now, it seemed so obvious. It was the Natural's power. Much like Dan's veil, it had drenched the cargo trailer, altering it down to its very atoms. It wasn't the warping that Dan had seen before, but something much lighter, much softer. Had it been preparation for the jarring impact of ramming a building? Or maybe just the man's passive presence had an altering effect on his surroundings. The fact that he'd left a trail behind lent credence to the latter, but it didn't really matter. What mattered was that Dan could sense it. If he could sense it, he could track it.

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a bandana. With a shrug, he wrapped it around his face, tucking it down into his shirt. If he was doing this, he was going to do it right. He sent his veil further, dipping past his normal limits, and into the well that normally suffused his body. He felt oddly empty as it pulled away from him, but he used the extra distance to sweep the entrance of the field office for electronics. He found nothing of note. It was as empty as it looked.

Dan reappeared in the lobby and strolled along with the casual comfort of a ghost among gravestones. The steel gate that had once barred his way in to the offices was gone, broken by the villainous Natural's headlong rush into the building. Dan's veil scouted ahead, as Dan followed the man's path. Now that he knew what his veil needed to look for, the trail was obvious. Not to say that it wasn't obvious with his eyes alone: the Natural hadn't bothered to follow the winding hallways of the field office, choosing instead to smash a straight path to his destination. The deeper he moved, the darker it became. The electricity had been turned off, but Dan didn't need his eyes to see. His veil showed him the way.

Dan moved through the wreckage, choosing to walk rather than teleport, so that his veil could focus entirely on scanning the surroundings. The Natural had seemed obvious in his efforts, but that could just as easily be a deception. It was better, Dan thought, to confirm what his eyes were telling him. He felt rather smug about that decision, and some part of him expected to find some kind of hidden sojourn; an objective other than the obvious that only Dan would find.

He was sorely disappointed. The trail terminated outside the armory, where a door that looked more fitting for a bank vault lay bent and discarded. Dan would have found the sight comical if not for the situation that had led to it. The massive gate was a slab of metal too heavy for his veil to budge. In the center was an imprint of a fist, or a shoulder. It looked like an angry god had punched it in the gut, and it had crumpled around the blow. Then it was cast aside, worthless and broken.

The armory was empty, obviously. The villain had taken whatever he could carry, and the feds had taken the rest. Dan picked his way carefully through what was left, stepping around sharp debris and plaster, where the Natural's initial entrance had shattered the ceiling and walls. The trail lead forward, then down. A hole in the floor, a short drop into the basement below.

Dan skipped the fall and teleported to the bottom. He glanced around, taking note of the absolute darkness. He could no longer hear the street above. It would have been pretty damn eerie, if his veil wasn't detailing his surroundings for him. Dan shut his eyes, and walked. The path was even more obvious down here. Less clutter, less destruction. The villain had stopped walking through walls, choosing instead to pick his way through the winding hallways. It seemed clear that he knew the way to his destination, despite the maze-like surroundings.

Once again, the path did not divert. At no point, that Dan could see, did the villain change course or get lost. His path took him straight to the cells, which now stood abandoned. Dan was glad the lights were out. The cages were empty, but their presence unnerved him. They stood firm and upright, ten cells side by side, solid steel and thick glass keeping prisoners separate from the world. All save one.

His veil felt the twisted remains of the cell once more. He heard water in the distance, and a quiet dripping. This close, he could smell the dank scent of the sewer. He tightened his bandana, and moved forward. His heavy duty boots splashed against fetid water, as he ducked into what seemed to be some kind of maintenance tunnel.

The villain's tracks followed it away from the field office. The gap between tracks was vast, now. The man had been running, each of his long strides matching four of Dan's. They went for miles, but the villain had been moving at a good clip. What had taken Dan over an hour to walk might have taken the man a handful of minutes. Could Andros have kept up, or had the Natural been forced to carry him? Dan had crippled the mad scientist before Cornelius brought him in. Did he have prostethics, or had his rescuer tossed him over their shoulder like a sack of flour? Dan found the thought incredibly amusing.

The tunnel eventually branched, and Dan could feel water flowing. It wasn't deep. Austin wasn't quite in the middle of a drought, but the incredible heat had made existence fairly unbearable for just about everything. Even water had its limits. He was thankful for it, as his boots squished against... something. Still, he walked forward, following the tunnel until he saw light shining down from above.

It was a manhole, the kind that emerged into a street. There was a ladder leading down for workers to use, and a quick check with his veil showed the same signs of passage that had led him here. More, even. The top of the ladder was almost completely altered in that strange, subtle way. Strangely, the ground beside the base of the ladder was as twisted as the villain's armor had been. His veil felt at the warped material, and Dan was sure that the distortion was visible.

He pulled his phone out to check, using its flashlight function and snapping several pictures. Sure enough, the concrete was misshapen, too smooth and flat, and discolored compared to its surroundings. Dan pulled up his GPS, checking his location. He'd traveled almost five miles. They were on the very edges of downtown, in the wealthier part of the city.

Dan sent his veil up the ladder, and onto the sidewalk above. He sensed for the telltale vibrations that indicated an oncoming car, and found nothing. A thought took him upward, and he glanced around. It was a street like any other, positioned in a side alley beneath the shadow of a skyscraper.

Dan spun in a slow circle, his veil probing the ground. Nothing! No distortion. No warping. No tracks to be found. Had they been picked up? A car couldn't fit in this narrow alley, but a motorcycle might. Had there been another conspirator, another villain, waiting to escort them to safety? Or maybe they'd taken a risk, and left the vehicles here?

Dan didn't think so. There should be more signs if that were the case. The ladder had clearly been climbed, but the sewer cap... He scanned it with his veil, and it seemed untouched. So was the ground around it. Dan took a deep breath, and blinked back into the sewer. He crouched over the warped ground, and plunged his veil into it. It was less dense than the concrete around it, almost as if it had been expanded to fill an empty space.

"Something was buried here," Dan decided. Clothes probably. Better to blend in. The villain uncovered them, they changed, and up the ladder they went. Maybe the man put on some blasted shoes. That might have suppressed his effects on the environment, though somehow Dan doubted it. The permeation of the villain's power went deep. Dan's veil should still pick up something.

After a moment's consideration, he sent his veil down the tunnel, continuing away from the ladder. He picked the trail up almost immediately. Dan stared, feeling like an idiot. But the ladder had clearly been climbed. Its rusted iron carcass felt completely incomprehensible to Dan's veil. The villain had stood on it, had lingered on it.

And then he turned away? Why?

Dan followed the trail once more, seeking his answers.