The mood at ICMHP had changed drastically over the last few hours. Earlier it had been a sort of festive environment. Now half the crowd was somber, as they realized that they weren’t alone and things were messed up all over the rest of the world too, and the other half was really excited, because they’d come to the same conclusion and were now figuring out how they could make money off the situation by blowing things up. Hunters are proactive like that.
I caught a couple of the panels that sounded interesting, where the topics were about the technical end of Hunting. It turned out that the German, Lindemann, was a former member of the elite German counter-terrorism unit GSG-9, and a walking encyclopedia of how to kill dangerous fey. That panel alone was worth the price of admission. Sure, he had insulted me earlier, but at least I had been insulted by the best. Then I went to one of the boring policy ones, but my wife was on the panel so I had no choice. She spent most of it arguing with some idiot professor who was advocating fair trials for intelligent undead. After that was another one on PUFF filing and how to get timely payments from the Treasury, but I snuck out after fifteen minutes of listening to information that I already knew about.
The conversations in the halls were different than before. Stupid Hunters didn’t live long, and we worked in a business that fostered a healthy sense of paranoia. The guests knew that something was up, and many of them had come to the same conclusions that we had. The conference was rigged. The timing was too suspicious. The official policy makers hadn’t wanted the world’s Hunters to know what was going on, but someone else with sufficient pull had arranged to put us all together where the subject would surely arise, but they weren’t direct enough to simply come out and say it.
The keynote address was next. When I had read the description earlier, and it said that it was going to be the MCB director discussing policy, I hadn’t expected there to be much turnout. But now with all of the fresh new conspiracy theories floating around, there was already a crowd formed outside the banquet-hall doors waiting for the keynote to begin. Unfortunately, some of the men loitering around the hall were PT douchebags, which meant that I needed to hang back in order to not violate the restraining order. But since I really wanted to hear what Stark was going to say, I’d just waited until the lights went down before sneaking in. The room was packed, so I didn’t think anyone would notice me. John VanZant, who was also named on the restraining order, was standing in back too. Agent Franks was the last one in, and he just stood there, glowering.
A moment later Director Stark walked out to the podium to sporadic applause. A bunch of unfamiliar bureaucrats came in behind him and sat on folding chairs at the back of the stage. I found it amusing that Stark already had a posse. Myers had got by with just Franks…And then I realized how odd it was that the MCB’s single most famous asset had been stuck out here in nowhere land and not in prestige seats. Was there a reason for that? I looked over at Franks, but his expression was as inscrutable as ever.
The first few minutes of the keynote were more prewritten nonsense. The only interesting bit was about how the United States government would be awarding several large new contracts for monster-related facility security. The accountant part of my brain filed that away, but the Hunter part really wanted to know about this strange underground invasion. Stark changed topics, but now it was more blather about synergy and mission statements. The audience was becoming tense. Now that they knew something was happening worldwide, the Hunters were eager for answers. They wanted meat, and they were being given fluff.
“Tell us what you know!” a man shouted from the center of the room. I couldn’t make out who it was, but I was impressed a bunch like this had been patient this long. Stark pretended that he hadn’t heard and kept reading. Then another Hunter to the side yelled something similar, then another Hunter in back raised a rude question, and the bureaucrats behind Stark began to shift nervously.
Stark reached up and adjusted his suddenly too-tight necktie. It must have been constricting his considerable bulldog jowls. “Easy, everyone. I don’t know what you’re carrying on about.”
“Lies.” That accusation caused some shifting and looking by the MCB in the audience to see who’d said it. Earl Harbinger saved them the trouble of searching, because he simply stood up so everyone could see him. “We know about the pattern. We know about the attacks. Don’t waste our time.”
Stark blanched when he saw who it was. I don’t know what their history was, but it was plain to see that Stark didn’t like, and was a little frightened of, Earl Harbinger. What was it with Earl and collecting personal grudges with MCB Directors? “You need to quiet down or I’ll have security remove you.”
Security? Franks sighed dejectedly. Sweet. I would pay good money to watch Frankenstein and the Wolfman fight. That would be some Clash of the Titans level awesomeness right there. Earl sat back down, but I could tell that he wasn’t done yet. Once Earl got to pushing he wasn’t going to quit until he got what he wanted.
“Now where was I?” The vibrating of Stark’s pocket was picked up over the microphone. He tried to ignore his phone and kept on reading from his increasingly pointless speech.
Agent Franks lifted one hand to his earpiece, scowling. His blunt features twisted into a dangerous scowl, then he walked quickly from the hall. The three government men sitting on the stand behind Stark all reached into their pockets at the same time. The lights of the phone’s displays could be seen across the hall. The G-men exchanged glances, and then two of them stood up and quickly walked off stage. The other agents providing security all began speaking softly into their microphones. Phones began buzzing all across the auditorium, except for a few MCB men who had forgotten to put them on vibrate, and those began to ring. Every single MCB in sight had just gotten a call.
Something was going down.
A murmur rose from the audience. Agent Stark continued reading from his prepared remarks and let the call go to voice mail, but after a few seconds his pocket began buzzing again. He finally looked up from his paper, scanned the audience, saw all the display lights and realized there was a problem. “Better answer this. Probably the wife.” He laughed nervously, covered the microphone with one hand, and turned away to take the call. Stark listened and didn’t make a sound for probably thirty seconds. It was very awkward.
When he turned back around, his eyes were very wide. “Well, uh…Let’s see…Important business. You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.” He took a few halting steps, realized he should probably say something else and came back to the microphone. “I’ll be right back. There is nothing to be concerned about. Please remain seated.” And then the Director of the MCB fled the podium.
The audience murmur evolved into the suspicious muttering of several hundred Hunters. The final government man on the stage looked around, realized he was all alone, then got up and hurried after his boss. A minute passed, but no one came out to fill the void. It was the middle of the keynote address and the spotlight was completely empty. Now we knew something really interesting had happened.
“Bring out the dancing girls!” one of the Australians shouted. There was general nervous laughter.
My phone vibrated. I pulled it out, expecting a text from one of my teammates. Hopefully someone had been able to overhear one of the MCB and had an idea what was going on. But the number was listed as Unknown.
Would you like to know what is going on? Meet in room 212. You have 5 minutes.
That seemed odd, but it wasn’t until I looked up that I realized the really weird part. There were about fifty other Hunters scattered across the room reading their phones too. I recognized most of them as team leaders or managers from the various companies. VanZant, who was standing only a few feet away, showed me his phone.
We had all received the same message.