The Plane’s Children – Chapter Four – Emersli1

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9 Minutes

Blair had searched.  Without results. 

It wasn’t really that surprising.  Sentinels rarely reached out to the psionic plane, so the chance of Caulfield camping out there waiting for help was slim.

Still, it was a disappointment.  

The guides at the center were all on high alert, probing for any feelings of distress they might be able to use to triangulate a location.

So far, they had found two abused children and a young woman who had just been assaulted in her home.  But no missing sentinel.

“Uh sir?  Sirs?”  Mick Brandon had been so proud to get this post.  And he was thrilled to be learning from the Chief Inspector himself.  But sometimes he felt like the dumb little kid in the room.  But something in Amalda Vernon’s file had given him an idea, and it might have borne fruit.

Maybe.

“Go ahead Mick.  Ask your question.  Maybe it’ll suggest something.”  Tony was tired and frustrated.  And in less than two hours he was going to have a couple of twenty-year-old kids looking for answers he didn’t have to give them.  At this point anything might be helpful.

“Well, I noticed that Amalda’s spirit animal was a hummingbird, and I was curious about Matthew’s.  So, I looked it up in his file.  It’s a buffalo.”  

Blair stirred from his seat in the corner.  “It’s an unusual combination, maybe.  But within S/G pairs our spirit animals are almost always complements of each other.  Maybe Amalda’s hummingbird needed the stability and grounding the buffalo could provide.”

Brandon nodded along.  “That’s not really what I meant.  Buffalo are big.  And they’re not native to this area.  So, I did a general system search for any reports of buffalo in the general area, and I got two hits.  About six miles apart.”

Tony stared at his sergeant in astonishment.  “That … that is brilliant, Mick.  Way to think outside the box!  We need another whiteboard.  Because we’ve all forgotten that we have two victims… not just one.”

“But in the meantime,” Jim had been quiet up to this point, leaning on the wall beside Blair’s chair.  “In the meantime, we’re heading out to find a buffalo.  Good work, kid.”

Mick flushed.  That was one thing about Tony.  And apparently about Sentinel Ellison.  They were just as quick to tell you when you’d done well as they were to correct you when you’d goofed.

Man, he loved his job!

OK, maybe he didn’t love his job anymore.

After three dedicated hours of searching, they had finally located the buffalo.  He was standing and pacing tiredly in front of an abandoned silo in the literal middle of nowhere.  Seriously, that was the name of the nearest town.  Nowhere, Maryland.

He looked like he was about to collapse.  He was thin and ragged, his heavy mane coming out in clumps.  One horn looked broken, and his eyes… Brandon’s golden retriever whined in distress.  The buffalo looked lost and empty.

Jim Ellison and Bethany Parker broke open the reinforced door to the old building, and they all entered cautiously.  The round room had two new walls, one on each side.  The door to the first was open, displaying a small room with a cot.  An empty gallon jug of water and box of Vanilla wafers sat on the floor.  A bucket in the far corner had obviously been used as a privy.

On the opposite side, the door had been welded shut.

The buffalo stood in front of the closed door, shaking on his feet.  The amount of psionic energy he was using to remain visible was clearly more than he had to spare, but he remained steadfast … refusing to move from his post.

Blair reached his hand towards the exhausted spirit.  “It’s alright.  We’re here now.  We’ll get him out.   You can rest.”

The buffalo moved aside, but remained visible.  Tony moved forward, and as a latent he really shouldn’t be able to see someone else’s spirit animal … but Tony had always been strange that way.  Tony moved confidently toward the buffalo.

“Hey fella, you’ve done a good job.  But we’ve got Matthew now.  I know you’re worried, but it’s gonna take about thirty minutes to get a medi-copter out here.  You don’t have to stay visible for all of that.”

Emmet Jackson had found the blowtorch, abandoned to one side under a pile of trash.  “No protective equipment, but by the looks of that bison we don’t have time to wait.  Sentinels, close your eyes and cover your ears if you can.  This is going to be bright.  And noisy.” He fired up the torch and began cutting the seams of the doorframe.

Mick took the hint his boss threw him and stepped outside to use his sat phone and call for a chopper.  The pilot radioed back the coordinates of the nearest place open enough to land, and Brandon went back inside to give that information to Tony, along with an estimate of the arrival time.

Jackson had gotten enough of the door clear for the sentinels to wrench it open.

The first thing to hit was the smell.  Mick wasn’t a sentinel, and it was overwhelming.  He couldn’t imagine how Ellison and Parker weren’t outside puking.

Moving into the room they found Matthew Caulfield.

He was curled in a corner, and he looked like he’d been through the wars.  Unlike his guide, Caulfield’s body was battered.  His hands, clenched in front of him, were obviously broken in places.  One shoulder was dislocated.  A rattle to his breathing suggested broken ribs.

“Why would he beat up a sentinel and leave the guide unhurt?  How could he have beaten Caulfield this badly, unless he was another Sentinel?  How could a sentinel even do something like this?”  Brandon was completely bewildered.

Tony shook his head.  “The perp didn’t beat him up, Brandon.  He did it to himself trying to get out.”

Oh.

That somehow just made everything more real and more awful.  The buffalo nosed at Caulfield where he lay crumpled on the ground.  He snorted sadly, nudging his sentinel, as though begging him to get up.

“Fifteen minutes til the chopper lands.  The nearest spot is about a mile away, so they’ll bring a stretcher with them.”  He relayed the information to his boss, and wished there was more he could do.

Tony crouched down beside Caulfield, and began to speak.

“Hey Matt.  I know you’re hurting.  But you need to know that we’re here now.  You’re found, and in just a half an hour you’ll be away from this place and on your way to someplace that will take care of you.  I know it’s been a long, long road … but you’re almost at the end.  You’re safe now.  And man, you have one stubborn buffalo giving me the stinkeye.”

He turned towards the animal.  “Listen, if we try to move him, we could hurt him worse.  None of us are doctors.  In hindsight that was a mistake.  But anyway, we’re not ignoring his condition, and we have doctors coming to help.  It’s just going to take a few more minutes.”

A snort not unlike his spirit animal’s sounded from the man curled up on the floor.  “Yeah.  Give it up.  You’re not gonna move him if he’s decided he’s staying.  Just work around him.”

The voice was thin and strained, no doubt from extended screaming for help, but it was audible.  And the man sounded sane, which was more than Mick would have expected in the circumstances.  About forty percent of sentinels lost their minds when they lost their guides.  Most of those passed quickly, but every S/G Center in the country had a few rooms for bond widows.  Guides seemed to handle it better, but even they could be unmoored by the loss of their bondmate.

“She’s gone.  I know she’s gone.  I don’t know how … I don’t understand.”  The ragged voice continued.

“Don’t worry about that now.  We’ll talk soon.  Once you’ve been cleared by the medics.  And we’ll figure this out.  But for now, just rest.”  Blair tried to soothe the badly injured man.

But Matthew and his buffalo were well-matched.  “No.  I want to tell you … I just don’t know much.”

“Alright Matthew, tell us what you can.”  Tony wasn’t going to argue with the man.  If he wanted to give a preliminary statement, Tony would listen.

The injured sentinel drew a careful breath.  “I heard the doorbell go.  Mallie called that she’d got it, so I kept watching the game.  Then I heard a noise I didn’t recognize, so I got up and went towards the front room.  I saw Mallie slumped over and some guy with his back to me trying to help her.  Or at least that’s what I thought.”

The man had to stop for a moment when a cough caught him unawares.

“I rushed over to help and saw he was wearing a mask.  He’d also managed to nullify his personal scent.  I got nothing.  He must have tazed me.  It knocked me back, but I managed to get back on my feet.”

More coughs.  Tony really hoped those medics hurried up.

“I rushed him.  Tackled him.  Was a mistake.  As soon as we were down on the floor, he jabbed me in the neck with something.  I got in maybe one good punch before everything went black.  I woke up in here.  I couldn’t sense anything outside this room, but Dizzy came in at one point, so I knew Mallie was close.”

Much to everyone’s relief, the paramedics rushed in at that point.  Yet Matthew waved them off with one battered hand.

“Let me finish.  I don’t know how much time passed, but I fell asleep at least three times so at a guess … six days?  I didn’t have food in here, but there was a gallon jug of water.  I tried to make it last.  I woke up suddenly, and felt Mallie … like … scream.  Psionically, not audibly.  She was terrified.  She’d been getting more and more scared as time went on, but this terror was … different.  Then she was in pain … so much pain.  I tried…”  He caught himself in a sob.  “I tried so hard to get out…to get to her.  And then she was just … gone.”

“That was forever ago, but I think it was only a couple of days.  Maybe?  I’ve done a number on myself so I’m really not sure.”

A longer coughing fit shook him, and Caulfield wiped the blood it brought up off his chin.

“I don’t know why.  I don’t know who.  I don’t know anything at all.”

At that point his spirit animal apparently ran out of patience, letting out a bellow that had every sentinel present wincing in pain.  “Alright Rollo, alright.  I’ll let them take care of me now.”

Tony moved back and allowed the paramedics to take over.

He gestured to Brandon and the two made their way out of the modified silo.  The crime scene team was just arriving, having had to hike in from the nearest parking area backpacking all their gear.

“C’mon Mick.  It’s a long walk back to the car.”  Tony turned and looked at the man being carried quickly out of the silo by a medical team that was in an obvious hurry to get back to their helicopter.  “Hopefully by the time they let him wake up, we’ll be able to answer at least some of his questions.

Mick stayed quiet on the hike back to the agency sedan they were using.  The Primes seemed exhausted, Tony was thoughtful, and Sentinel Parker and Guide Jackson were trying not to cry.

Wiping the tears he hadn’t even noticed himself shedding, Mick burned with a determination to help his team find those answers.

Justice must be served.