“Yeah, thanks.” I watch as he grabs a mug from a cupboard and pours. “You’ll be wanting an explanation next, am I right?”
“It’d help. Who were those people? And the, the things? What’s going on?”
He passes me the mug as the door at the other end of the room opens and the Queen of Air and Darkness walks in, and he begins filling another one immediately: she’s already got him trained. “I’m pretty sure what’s going on is that the folks who are attacking the agency sent those, uh, people, to kidnap you. Either or both of you. Incidentally confirming my theory about who the attackers are and why this is all kicking off now. I was sent to make sure that they didn’t get their hands on”—I nod at the aforementioned Empress of All the (surviving) Elves5—“you.”
“Cool!” she says brightly, and bounces onto the sofa next to Alex. He puts his arm around her shoulder protectively as she leans against him. So it’s like that, I think. “What happens now?”
“We need to talk about your future,” I tell them. “Dr. Armstrong sent me.” Alex twitches at the name, as startled as if I’d said Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. (At least he’s got enough of a clue to be afraid of the Senior Auditor. Good.) “Short version: the chaos over here shook stuff loose and some bad guys from overseas decided to move in. Said bad guys have friends in very high places, everyone’s looking for scapegoats, and yesterday the Cabinet Office rammed through an order shutting down the Laundry completely. They’re establishing a new agency next week, but that’s not good news because it’s going to be staffed and run by Schiller’s people. Uh … Schiller? Raymond Schiller?” They both look blank. “Big American televangelist, does subcontract work for the Black Chamber”—more blank looks—“our nearest American-equivalent occult agency, they’ve been kind of captured by the things they work with … anyway, Schiller runs a church and last time we had a run-in with them they were trying out a ritual to bring about the resurrection, only it turns out that if something hands you a piece of magic that says ‘open can to bring about the Second Coming’ you should really ask ‘Second Coming of what’ before you perform it.”
I can see I’m making a hash of this, so I take a sip of too-hot tea before I continue. “Schiller’s people are cultists, a great big very rich religious cult, hiding inside a not-quite-mainstream fundamentalist church. His Inner Temple pray with a Bible that has several extra books and a very different ending. Anyway, he flew in a week ago and has been having loads of meetings with cabinet ministers, even the PM—and then the hammer comes down on the Laundry. Those people who tried to take you are his; I recognize the type. He’s big on using mind-controlling parasites to keep his flock in line, and I’m pretty sure she was a handmaid—one of his more fanatical female followers. They tried to tackle me on the streets of London last week, they killed a foreign contact who was busy leaking their operational plans our way, they’ve got form. So: as of yesterday everyone who worked for SOE is out of a job, those of us who are directly on Schiller’s radar are wanted for arrest on faked-up criminal charges, the fox is making a public-private partnership bid for the henhouse with the support of the Prime Minister, and they’re moving to steal those bits of the household silver that look particularly tasty to them. Like you guys.”
“FuckFuck!” Cassie sounds disgusted. “What a mess. Why can’t humans run a nice sensible feudal hierarchy like anyone else? Then you wouldn’t have these problems!”
I decline to derail onto the Wars of the Roses. “We work with what we’ve got. Anyway, it’s not as if there wasn’t a plan for this sort of thing. The Laundry has other sources of funding and political legitimacy. Dissolving SOE triggered ramp-up of a different core agency called Continuity Operations, tasked with addressing whatever circumstances caused a government to turn hostile, and CO sent me to get to you before the bad guys.”
“Uh-huh.” Alex frowns. “And what makes you any better than—”
He’s interrupted by his maniac pixie dream girl, who punches him affectionately on the shoulder. “Stop it! You’re spoiling all the fun!” Cassie, unlike Alex, seems to be enjoying the meeting. She leans forward, nostrils flaring as she hams it up. “I know what we can do for you. What can you do for us?”
I fix my professional smile in place: the one that says this won’t hurt, not a bit. Ideally I should have done this part as soon as I swore him in, but I was distracted by the extradimensional hypercastrating parasites. “Cassie, I need to ask Alex a question. Please don’t interrupt, no matter how strange it seems.” I don’t stop, but roll straight on, and now I dig into my pocket and pull out my warrant card. “By the authority delegated to me, here goes … Hertzprung, Sapphire, Ocelot, Baculum. Execute Sitrep One, Dr. Schwartz.” The words feel like lumps of mercury dripping from my tongue and Alex’s eyes go wide, then unfocused.
Cassie tenses and glares at me. “You—” she begins.
“Subjective integrity maintained. Subjective continuity maintained. Subject observes no tampering.” Alex’s voice is flat and his answers are about what I expected. If they were anything else? Let’s not go there.
I push on. “Very good. Now execute Sitrep Two, Alex.”
Cassie keeps staring daggers at me but shuts up as Alex answers. “V-parasites at zero point seven. Interference at zero point three, rising.” The V-parasites tend to render PHANGs insensitive to geasa. “Subjective compliance at zero point six six, falling.”
I exhale heavily. “Exit supervision.” As Alex slumps I look at Cassie. “You will speak of this to no one. Those words won’t work on you,” I add. “Do you understand why I did that?”
Alex is blinking his way back towards full consciousness as she looks away from me and nods, just a sharp jerk of the chin. “Your kind’s loyalties are variable, YesYes?”
“Yeah, that.” I put the warrant card away. “Especially since dissolving the Laundry shut down our fucking oath of office for a while. I had to confirm that he hasn’t been meddled with. It’s a necessary precaution.”