The Law of Averages

Chapter 95

The man had arrived with little fanfare, simply pulling up to Dan’s driveway alone in an unmarked car. His gait had been hurried yet refined, somehow managing to practically sprint to the front door without looking like a buffoon. The older man had invited himself in with barely an acknowledgement towards Dan, merely stating, “Take me to my nephew,” after Dan had let him inside. He had spoken with all the unspoken authority of a man used to being obeyed. It had been grating for Dan, once again being ordered around in his own home.

But this man was Connor’s uncle, and clearly worried about the boy, so Dan had given him a pass. He’d led him to the living room, where Connor was waiting, and had watched while the officer pretended not to fret over his nephew. It was curious, Dan had thought at the time, that though he was clearly worried, the elder Graham had offered neither comforting words nor even a hug. In fact, he had taken great pains to avoid touching Connor entirely. Knowing the family, it was probably some kind of Natural protocols, to be obeyed even in direst circumstances.

Then, the questioning had begun. What was Connor doing when the power incarnated? What did it feel like? Had he felt this before? Since the kidnapping? When did it start? What was he thinking when it activated? On and on. At no point had Connor been asked to demonstrate his power. At no point was he told to even consider using it. It was as startling a contrast to Marcus’s methods as Dan could imagine, but he couldn’t yet make a judgement on its effectiveness. Once Cornelius had verified that Connor was alive and intact, albeit with a side dish of superpowers, he had sat down on the couch and faced Dan.

Which brought him to the present problem.

“You will not speak of this,” Cornelius Graham ordered gravely.

The order in question was directed at Daniel, who bristled like a porcupine.

“Excuse me?” he asked, meeting the older man’s eyes. Carefully, keeping in mind the man’s apparently high status, he added, “The last I checked, I wasn’t a member of the APD. You’ve got no business ordering me around in my own home.”

Perhaps not so carefully.

The officer clicked his tongue, and his eyes flicked to Connor. “My nephew has told me about you, Mr. Newman. And there are quite a few officers who are grateful for your service in preventing that bombing, myself included. That said, you’ll find that gratitude quickly running dry if you were to spread what has happened here.”

“Uncle!” Connor protested, almost rising out of his seat. “Daniel is a friend. You should not treat him with such suspicion!”

The older man quelled him with a gesture. “Be quiet, nephew. We are speaking of your future. Of the future of this family. I will not allow this to be leaked by some opportunistic vagrant.”

“Really feeling that gratitude,” Dan muttered under his breath.

“No offense intended, Mr. Newman,” the man said unapologetically. “I’m not necessarily referring to you. I don’t know you. I don’t know what other friends you might have. I will not allow loose lips to compromise my family’s future. Rumors spread like locusts; the wrong words in the wrong ears and my brother’s political career is jeopardized. Connor’s future in the APD is jeopardized. So if threatening you is the course I must take, then so be—”

At this point, the back door opened, and Abby and Freya came back inside. They had stayed outside at Abby’s request, as she had taken aside her female friend and attempted to comfort her. Freya had taken the event the most poorly of them all, so Dan was happy to let his girlfriend offer what reassurances she could. At the very least, she had some sourceable expertise in dealing with Natural powers. Clearly that conversation had gone well, as they both reentered with more cheerful expressions.

Cornelius bit off his sentence at the disturbance, glancing towards the back door with a furrowed brow. Then, he caught sight of Abby. His eyes widened, and he fired out of his seat like a spring was under his ass, landing in a stiff military posture. His back straightened like a ruler and his hand was halfway to his brow, before he aborted his salute with a confused blink, as he fully absorbed Abby’s features.

She barely paid the man anything more than a curious glance, before crossing the room to Dan’s side. She gave him an affectionate peck on the lips, then spun back around towards their guests. She scanned each member’s face, then, taking note of the exceptionally aggrieved expression that Connor wore, frowned and asked, “What did we miss?”

The older Graham goggled at her helplessly, his face twitching between bewildered and horrified. He quickly glanced back to Connor, searching for an explanation, but was stubbornly stonewalled. Turning back to Abby, his eyes flicked between the lines of her face, down to where she was holding Dan’s hand, then back to Dan.

Dan slid half a step backwards, using his girlfriend as shield between himself and the officer who looked like he was questioning his own perception of reality.

“You know,” Dan said slowly, trying his best to keep his voice honest, “I really don’t remember. If you would be so kind as to remind me, officer Graham?”

“Um,” Cornelius summarized succinctly.

Connor rolled his eyes. “Since you’ve been so unconscionably rude, uncle, allow me to properly introduce my friends.” His hand gestured to Dan. “Daniel Newman, whom I’ve spoken to you of.” A beat passed, and he pointed to Abby. “And his girlfriend, Abigail Summers. Heir to the tech conglomerate Summerset, among other things. Meet my uncle, Cornelius Graham.”

Cornelius’ smile was as wooden as a board. “Miss Summers. I see. How wonderful to make your acquaintance.”

Abby took his proffered hand with a puzzled glance at Connor. “You as well.” Her confusion was quickly superseded by concern, however, and she asked, “Is Connor stable?”

“Stable enough to transport, it seems,” Cornelius answered hesitantly, his eyes still flicking between Abby and Dan.

“I see.” She turned to Connor. “You’ve got Danny’s number. If you need any help adjusting to your condition, please call him. He knows how to reach me.” With an apologetic smile towards the older Graham, she added, “I mean no offense to your family, officer. My own simply has a great deal of experience dealing with such things. Connor is my friend. I am available if he needs me.” Her tone was as formal as Dan had ever heard it.

At her reassurance, Cornelius finally seemed to regain his bearings. He nodded with appreciation. “I’m aware of your family’s reputation, Miss Summers, and I appreciate the offer. I’ll be sure to pass it along to Connor’s father.”

She nodded once more, before returning to Dan’s side. The pinched look returned to Cornelius’ face.

“Mr. Newman,” he said awkwardly, “I clearly misjudged you. It’s clear from the company that you keep, that you are capable of handling yourself with discretion. I… retract my previous statements.”

“Uh huh,” Dan replied blandly, not bothering to hide the smirk that was crawling up the corner of his mouth.

The older man, quite wisely, chose not to further pursue the subject. He gave a stiff nod towards the couple, then turned to Connor. “We’ll be leaving now, nephew.” He paused, noticing that Freya was lingering nervously beside her fiance. “Freya, you may accompany us if you’d like. But we’ll be traveling slowly, for safety’s sake, and you’ll need to sit apart from Connor.”

She nodded furiously. “That would be acceptable, officer Graham.”

Cornelius rolled his eyes at her affectation, but waved her along. The three of them exited Dan’s home, with Connor stopping only long enough to flash Dan a confident smile.

“I’ll have this handled in no time, Newman,” he boasted, rapping a fist against his chest. “Be ready for our rematch.”

And then, they were gone.

There were two things that Dan needed to accomplish over the next few days. The first, and the most time-consuming, was to catalogue everything he’d pulled out of the People’s secret cache. He and Abby sat down to sort the wheat from the chaff, digging through dozens of documents and piling them into two major categories.

The first was the mundane. This is not to say that they were useless, merely that they were completely unexceptional in terms of their purpose. To Dan’s surprise, this was the vast majority of his prize. Unencrypted files, mostly old and handwritten, all penned by the same person, all stating their purpose clearly and succinctly. They were designed to be easily understood and sorted. It was as if Dan had raided some random manager’s office files, rather than a secret terrorist safe.

Spending reports, inventory lists, memos about the dress code, even a health insurance claim. The most useful of the lot were the staff complaints. Vigilantes, listed by name and alias, alongside their various problems with each other. There was a surprising number of files covering small instances of infighting, disagreements about policy, and just general harassment. Dan set those aside, certain that they’d be useful somehow. All told, it was the most ordinary pile of office papers that Dan had ever seen. He’d have never guessed it was referring to a group of supernatural terrorists.

The second pile was more interesting, though much smaller. Anything in cipher, any odd notes that made no sense in context, any mention of active plots, they were all thrown together. The various electronics he’d recovered were figuratively tossed into this pile as well, with the caveat that Dan refused to actually remove them from t-space. There was no telling what the damn things would do when exposed to reality. He wasn’t about to risk another security breach.

The juiciest bits of information that the pair of them could actually decipher were several drafts of the People’s manifesto, complete with spelling corrections and annotated suggestions, and a few heavily blacked out medical reports. The latter, according to Abby, could actually be recovered with the right upgrade or power. It was a method that had fallen out of favor, though apparently the People hadn’t got the memo.

The crown jewel of his little hoard was what Abby called a scouting report. Apparently, the people had slipped half a dozen of their agents into the largest upgrade designer in Texas at the time. This would’ve been a more pressing issue had said company not gone under over five years ago. The staff had scattered across the country, scooped up by the thriving industry. Without a more current report, Dan had no way to know if the companies financial troubles were a product of sabotage or incompetence. As it was, without any proof of tampering, all Dan had was a list of highly educated People sympathizers who worked in the upgrade industry.

Still, it was valuable information. After some discussion with Abby, he set it aside, pairing it with the list of vigilante’s he’d shown Connor and Freya. Both documents were slipped into a manila envelope, alongside printed copies of the pictures that Anastasia had provided, and a photocopy of Matilda’s background report. As an aggregate, it told a rather disturbing tale, though not one immediately verifiable.

The second task that Dan completed was dropping said envelope off at the local FBI field office. He’d done it anonymously; conveniently enough they actually had a system for such a thing. Though mailing it was the preferred option, he’d taken no chances, and simply appeared in an alley a block away from the office, wearing a comically oversized trench coat, a fake mustache, and aviators. Strolling down the street in such a get-up was quite possibly the most awkward thing that Dan had ever done, but it worked well enough.

He didn’t even need to physically drop off the envelope, simply poking his veil through the brick wall as he passed by. The technique was the reverse of the process that he had used to remove the traps in his basement. Rather than shifting a small portion of his veil from reality to t-space, thus removing matter, he simply did the opposite. His veil pulled a specific chunk of t-space into reality, and the manila envelope dropped on the mail room floor of the FBI office. Dan scampered away before anyone could notice the addition, or think to question the incredibly suspicious man in a trench coat.

It was quite possibly the most suspicious way he could have gone about it. Paradoxically, at least according to Abby, it would lend legitimacy to the documents. The People, at least in the past, were comprised heavily of Naturals. And, of course, everyone knew that Naturals were separate from the rest of humanity. They were different, dangerous, unnatural. Their thought processes couldn’t be judged by a normal person’s metric. It was not only normal for a Natural to go about their business in the most societally disruptive way possible, it was expected. It would have seemed downright fishy if Dan had acted like a normal person and called in a tip.

That said, his little act wasn’t convincing in of itself. Both Abby and Dan expected some time to pass before any action was taken. In the meantime, he was perfectly happy to ghost Matilda. It was hardly the first time he’d ignored her calls, so he estimated himself to have a week or two before she started to take more extreme measures.

Thus, with his most pressing issues dealt with, Dan had some time to prepare.

He would need it. His most daunting task was yet ahead.

One does not simply blackmail Anastasia Summers.