Chapter 157. The Bureau of Awakening

The Federal Bureau of Awakening, or FBA for short. An agency created for one purpose: to keep the Awakened under constant surveillance, conduct internal investigations, and lock up those who had completely lost their grip on reality. It was an essential instrument of control in any government, especially when dealing with people who possessed a biological advantage over ordinary human beings. As the cynics on Capitol Hill liked to point out, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

From the outside, the FBA building in Washington looked like another drab, uninspired box of gray brick. No identifying signs, no gold-embossed departmental plaques, no national flags flanking the entrance. The place was designed to pass for some nondescript government archive or warehouse. After visiting the Corps' administrative and engineering centers, I had grown accustomed to this kind of architectural anonymity. Apparently, every support facility in the organization that had nothing to do directly with Portal logistics was built from the same utilitarian blueprint.

I was an hour and a half late. Even the crisp fifty-dollar bill I'd tossed the cabdriver as a tip for his aggressive driving along the Capital Beltway had bought me a measly five minutes. I hated missing deadlines, especially on my very first day on the job. If Dillon's drunken stunt hadn't thrown a wrench into the works, I could've made it here in fifteen minutes flat on my red sport bike. The familiar flare of burning anger dissolved into the biochemistry of my overclocked brain before it could do any damage to my nervous system. Rather than waste energy on pointless hatred, I focused on the task at hand and called Hawk to let him know I'd arrived.

A couple of minutes later, a skinny young man with a neat, thin mustache emerged through the glass doors. He looked exactly as he had the last time we'd met at the Pentagon. The only difference was that he'd traded the formal dress uniform he'd worn while standing before General Crowley for ordinary dark trousers and a plain civilian shirt with an understated tie. He looked like a typical midlevel office analyst, not a dangerous federal agent. He didn't even have a regulation pistol holster on his belt.

"Mr. Ross, why are you... dressed like that?" He gave my perfectly pressed dress uniform, complete with its Bronze Star, a cautious, slightly bewildered once-over. "You probably just weren't familiar with how things work here. We're a federal agency, sure, but we're organized along paramilitary lines. There's no need to show up in full dress uniform every day. A regular business suit will do, or even just a shirt and tie."

"Got it. I'll keep that in mind." I calmly straightened my lapel, filing the information away. "And since we're officially working in the same sector now, let's skip the formal 'Mr.' and 'sir' routine. Just call me Tom."

"Oh. Okay, then... Tom." The young man, who had to be at least ten years younger than me, smiled awkwardly and held out his hand. "In that case, you can call me Jimmy. Captain Jimmy Hawk."

We exchanged a brief, firm handshake. I noticed his shoulders relax, although I could still detect a trace of mental tension in the way he held himself.

"Tom, let's get inside. We're running out of time." He glanced up and down the empty street like a spy checking for surveillance, then ushered me into the cool interior of the building. "If anyone asks, you've been here since eleven this morning. You've been in your office the whole time, going through databases and compiling the Bureau's internal statistics. Got it?"

"Got it." I gave him a quick wink, registering the revised parameters.

This was probably the first time in my professional life that I'd ever asked a colleague to falsify an official record and lie to senior management to cover up a logistical screwup. The thought made me instantly uncomfortable, stirring up a dull sense of shame and another surge of icy hatred toward one particular hungover individual back at P-SWAT. Dillon had no idea how much damage he'd done to my professional reputation or how dearly it was going to cost him.

Inside, the FBA building was just as sterile, gray, and utterly tasteless as its exterior. It was a standard government office, complete with the monotonous hum of air conditioners and cheap linoleum underfoot. Judging by appearances, the place was about a third the size of Betty's administrative department. That made sense. Apparently, there were far fewer criminal Awakened than there were honest, law-abiding employees whose paychecks the government had to deposit like clockwork every month.

Finding my way around the Bureau was easy enough. The building lacked the open-plan offices common in the corporate world, with their low cubicle partitions that left employees constantly exposed to the eyes of their colleagues and supervisors. Instead, the FBA was divided into separate offices with solid doors. The layout immediately raised an obvious question.

"Jimmy, how many people work in this building altogether? How many field agents do we have?"

Captain Hawk paused beside a water cooler, his eyes comically rolling toward the ceiling. The last time I'd seen exactly the same expression was on my childhood friend Megan's face when she was in elementary school, trying to count the students in her classroom by mentally tallying the rows of desks on her fingers.

"Twelve, including you, Tom," Jimmy announced after a good minute of mental arithmetic.

"And that's the entire staff of an entire department?" I stared at him in genuine disbelief, trying to make the numbers add up. "Selina's engineering division has a hundred times as many technicians just to maintain the cables."

"Well, the engineers have a much bigger operation to deal with." He shrugged, filled a plastic cup to the brim with ice-cold water, and took a long drink. "They pull tons of weird anomalous junk out of Portals every day, and all of it has to be scanned, cataloged, and tested around the clock. Our job is much simpler. We just keep an eye on the registered Awakened and make sure they stay out of trouble. There are about three thousand of them across the entire United States right now."

"So, if we run the numbers, that gives us exactly two hundred and fifty Awakened for every active Bureau agent," my cybernetic brain calculated instantly.

After running the figures through my head, I concluded that the actual situation at the FBA was far more manageable than I'd initially assumed. Three thousand people was the population of a tiny town somewhere in rural Texas or Ohio, where a single aging sheriff and a couple of lazy deputies could usually keep the peace. As long as we could stop those three thousand Awakened from joining forces and forming one big criminal gang, twelve federal agents should be more than enough to keep things under control.

A tall, athletic man around my age emerged from the massive oak door at the far end of the hallway, immediately drawing my attention. I reacted on instinct, discreetly activating [Analysis] on him with pinpoint precision. My mental radar instantly returned a concise report: the man was exactly thirty years old and possessed an exceptionally rare and dangerous ability. Through physical contact or a direct hit, his energy pulse could completely shut down an Awakened opponent's S-Power reserves. A walking containment unit.

The man immediately noticed us standing in the otherwise empty gray hallway. He fixed me with a heavy, penetrating stare, showed a moment of genuine surprise at the dress uniform and insignia I was wearing, then strode straight toward us.

"That's Scott Grimm. Our direct supervisor, both yours and mine," Jimmy Hawk whispered, barely moving his lips. "And for the love of God, Tom, remember: you've been at the Bureau since early this morning."

I gave the captain a brief nod to let him know he could stop worrying. I had no intention of throwing a loyal colleague under the bus, much less digging my own professional grave in front of senior management.

"Oh, so you're our new analyst." Grimm stopped a couple of steps away, folded his arms across his chest, and gave me an attentive once-over, looking visibly impressed. "My memory for names is lousy. I've completely forgotten what I'm supposed to call you on the paperwork..."

"Thomas Ross. It's a pleasure to meet you officially, Inspector."

"Scott Grimm." He gave my hand a powerful shake, then delivered a solid pat on the shoulder with his free hand, apparently assessing my muscle mass and biceps the way one man might size up another. "You're a solid guy. And a Bronze Star on your uniform, too? It's been a long time since Corps headquarters sent us a real combat officer fresh from the Portals. What do you say, Tom? Want to come along on our next actual arrest?"

"I'll do whatever falls within my official duties and operational requirements," I replied mechanically, maintaining a perfectly neutral tone so I would not give anything away.

We exchanged a couple more meaningless pleasantries before Grimm spun around and strode off toward the building's street exit. Apparently, my immaculate appearance and combat decorations had earned me another handful of points with senior management without my having to lift a finger. Hawk and I were alone again in the stuffy hallway.

"Don't get your hopes up too much about those field assignments he was talking about," Jimmy remarked skeptically as he filled another plastic cup with ice water. "We rarely make actual arrests at this bureau. In the three years I've worked here, we've only had two full-blown arrests."

"That was pretty much what I suspected," I said coolly, folding my arms as I put the pieces together. "I haven't seen a single employee in this building carrying a firearm. And judging by how quiet it is, you don't even seem to have a shooting range out back for target practice and weapons training."

"Our internal regulations strictly prohibit us from carrying firearms, let alone using lethal force," Hawk muttered listlessly, staring at his plastic cup. "Awakened individuals in the United States are a strategic resource, exceptionally rare and ridiculously expensive for the government to maintain. The department absolutely forbids injuring them during an arrest, much less killing them. The boss and his deputy personally handle every criminal apprehension in the country. With their abilities to neutralize other Awakened, they can make arrests quietly, without bloodshed or unwanted attention from the press."

"So what do the other ten agents do all day?"

"We sit in our offices, monitor traffic on our computers, and churn out administrative fines for Awakened who commit minor violations. It's not exactly exciting work, but the department pays well and offers good benefits, so I can't complain." Jimmy flicked his empty cup neatly into a plastic trash can. "All right, let's go. Time to show you your new workspace. Your very own office, no less."

As we made our way down the Bureau's gray hallway at a leisurely pace, I found myself feeling a little disappointed. After spending countless evenings watching season after season of CSI with my mom, my subconscious had developed a predictable set of expectations whenever someone mentioned a "special agent": hard-nosed investigators, midnight car chases, screeching tires, ambushes, and shootouts in abandoned warehouses. Once again, real life had proven to be a great deal duller, more routine, and more bureaucratic than fiction.

My personal office turned out to be a standard, utilitarian gray box. The furnishings consisted of a single polished desk, an adjustable chair, and a modern desktop computer with an LCD monitor. At least there was a wide window overlooking a quiet Washington side street.

"Take a look at this, Tom." Hawk clicked the mouse to launch the operating system, then moved the cursor over the first desktop icon. "This folder gives you direct access to the personal files of every registered Awakened in the country. My advice is to start by studying this archive in detail so you'll know who you're dealing with."

"Sounds good," I replied evenly, doing my best to keep a satisfied grin off my face.

"This is our secure internal email system." He pointed to the second icon, beneath which a notification badge showed a lonely five-digit count of unread messages. "It automatically collects all suspicious and unsolved criminal cases from across the United States. You've got full access to police servers, too. Your job is to work through the cases systematically and determine whether any of them might involve Awakened using their abilities."

"And how exactly am I supposed to identify anomalies in this mountain of paperwork?" I asked, frowning slightly as I took in the sheer volume of incoming information. "Some of these cases are twenty years old."

"I have no idea, Tom. You're on your own there." Hawk shrugged and headed for the doorway. "I got your official personnel assignment from upstairs. It said your superpower was ideally suited to this kind of analytical work. The rest is up to you."

He was about to leave, but paused in the doorway.

"In my experience, ninety-nine point nine percent of these supposedly mysterious cases have absolutely nothing to do with the Awakened. If five million dollars vanish without a trace from a locked bank vault in New York, it's probably not the work of some guy who can teleport. More likely, the vault manager got drunk at a bar and blabbed the combination to someone."

Hawk eased the door shut behind him, leaving me in absolute silence with tens of thousands of criminal case files, their databases continuously updated in real time.

If I were an ordinary person, I would probably have gone insane just looking at that endless digital mountain of data. But for my cybernetic brain, this was an ideal setup. I could hand off all the tedious analytical work to my hyperfocus and easily earn a legitimate fifty thousand dollars a month in return. It was an exceptionally good deal.

Besides, I immediately recognized the biggest advantage of my new position. I had just gained legitimate access to the classified personal files of every Awakened individual in the United States. At last, I would be able to learn the true abilities, weaknesses, and limits of every Awakened in the country in exhaustive detail. And who knew? Some of that unique information might eventually help me make significant progress in developing my own abilities.