The Law of Averages

Dan dropped out of t-space half a mile from the address that Anastasia had sent him. This would be the third People's cache that the old woman had called him in to open in as many months. At this point, Dan was fairly certain the lethal old crone wasn't out to get him, but better safe than sorry. He'd rather appear somewhere a little distant and walk the rest of the way, rather than pop into some sort of elaborate trap. Even one that was simply designed to humiliate, rather than harm. But that wasn't the real reason why he took his time.

Dan wouldn't lie to himself, he felt a sort of malicious pleasure at making Anastasia wait for him to arrive. After all the shit she'd given him for dating Abby, it felt like a bit of inconvenience was the least that he could repay her with. He was here, wasn't he? Anastasia could deal with a bit of tardiness. The Summers' matron didn't have many people in her life willing to be anything other than deferential. That wasn't good for a person. It built an unhealthy mindset, one that needed adjusting. Dan was happy to do his part. For Abby.

Dan was in northern Colorado this time, called to some Podunk little town on the edge of nowhere that Dan had never even heard of. He'd appeared on the roof of an old grocery store, the location of which he'd pulled from Dimension A's version of Google Maps. He peered over the edge, glancing up and down the street. It was freezing cold and snowing outside; the roads were stark white and everyone in the city was huddling indoors. Dan blinked himself down to the sidewalk, and damn near broke his neck as he immediately slipped on the iced over ground.

Once he'd found his footing, Dan zipped up his jacket, tightened the scarf around his neck, and set off down the road, hands tucked firmly into his pockets. He regretted his childish decision to walk the last leg of the journey almost immediately. Some part of him wondered if Anastasia had predicted this, and purposely picked a location experiencing the worst weather possible. Dan supposed he should be grateful it was no longer hurricane season; he might've found himself on the gulf coast at the worst possible time.

The city itself was.... fine, he supposed. It had an old-timey western mining town feel to it, lots of wood buildings and dirt paths. The entire town was clearly designed with a certain aesthetic in mind, and stuck fiercely to that idea. It looked rather pretty all covered in snow, like a moment of history frozen in time. It could've been a picture lifted right off the face of a Hallmark card, or the set of True Grit. Assuming either of those existed in this dimension.

There wasn't much else to say about the town. Dan genuinely couldn't even remember its name. Anastasia had only supplied him a series of GPS coordinates. Dan had looked them up on a digital map, then scrolled left about half a mile and picked a random spot to drop in. It seemed odd to him that the People had bothered to put a base here. While the town's remote nature might have been a boon for hiding them from the federal government's grasp, Dan found it hard to believe that the residents themselves would remain oblivious forever. Either the anonymity outweighed the chance of discovery by nosey neighbors, or there was some other reason for the People's decision. The forest, perhaps.

The Empty Woods lay some thirty miles away from the small town through which Dan currently walked. The massive swathe of trees stretched some 300 miles, a broad green brushstroke across New Mexico and Colorado that sprang into existence within a few short years of the White Sands explosion. The forest was foreboding, dark and terrible and the source of a thousand horrific stories since its appearance. Less an urban legend than a rural fact. He could've seen it from the roof of the grocer, had he glanced that way. Even through the thick sheet of white snow, that sea of green stood tall. The Empty Woods always announced their presence through terrible silence.

The woods weren't actually empty, at least not on the outer edges. Countless daredevils, adventurers, and even scientists had proven that the woods could be surveyed safely, up to a point. Yet still countless more had been lost to its depths, entire parties vanishing entirely. The air above it was a no-fly zone, strange interference bringing them down as often as not. It was the West's very own land-based Bermuda Triangle. Well, more like a rectangle, really. With a slight curving tilt that allowed the truly tasteless to make phallic jokes about the thousands of missing people.

Dan couldn't begin to guess the number of cities that simply didn't exist in Dimension A because of this sprawling natural disaster. The only consolation to be found was that its borders were not growing. Whatever cosmic fuckery had caused the forest to sprout into existence had apparently expended itself, at the expense of most of the state.

At some point, people had simply given up trying to study the Empty Woods. Perhaps the body count grew too high, or interest faded in a thing that was, essentially, just sitting there. It was widely accepted, much like many other things in this dimension, as simply one more inescapably horrible aspect of existence. And like most other existential horrors that plagued humanity, some idiot organization was bound to try and poke it.

Dan hoped that nothing had come of it.

Eventually he arrived at his destination. The electronics store seemed as bland as they came, looking for all the world like any of the other assorted shops that dotted the main road of this miniscule town. Only the array of dark-tinted cars parked in its back lot, and the bright yellow police tape wrapping around the front door gave away the game.

The People had picked their spot well. There was absolutely nothing conspicuous about the building nor the location. It was smack dab in the middle of town, more or less, and seemed no larger than any of its neighbors. Dan suspected the basement hid some sinister secrets, waiting to be untangled. A vault, locked tight, but Dan had the key.

As he approached the back of the store, he idly wondered how Anastasia had uncovered this place. Given that it was still standing, it must have been taken by stealth. He found it hard to imagine that the old woman knew the definition of subtlety, but she clearly must have at some point, given her old profession. She was just too powerful, too entrenched, to bother with it now.

The back door was watched by a man in a grey trench coat and dark glasses. Every inch of him screamed suspicious, so he was obviously working for Anastasia. The Summers logo emblazoned on the breast of his coat confirmed Dan's leap of logic. He was waved inside, and lead down a short flight of stairs by another jacketed henchman. Anastasia waited at the bottom, surrounded by yet more goons, all peering around a massive underground room with inquisitive expressions.

The People seemed to favor massive underground rooms; the place seemed near identical to the one beneath Dan's house, at least in design principle. They weren't much for decoration, or hallways, or even distinct partitions. Just one massive space, that had presumably been packed full of dangerous crap long before Dan had set foot there. It had all been cleared away now, leaving nothing but metal walls and the remnants of a stripped away carpet.

"Newman," Anastasia greeted curtly. Her eyes flicked briefly over him, noting the thick layer of frost coating his jacket. The briefest expression of amusement flickered across her face, before smoothing over. She nodded to the center of the room, where a small area had been roped off. "Get to it."

"Nice to see you too," Dan groused. He swept past her, striding towards the marker. The rest of the goon squad parted around him, posting themselves up against the walls. Dan vanished mid-step, falling into a reflection of the room in t-space. A sleek silvery orb hovered there, in that endless black abyss. So simple and unassuming, yet so very important.

Dan eyed it for a moment as his veil boiled up off his skin. It lanced forward, uninhibited by the not-air of the Gap, and burrowed into the orb like a nail being driven into drywall. The thing shimmered, its silver sheen giving way to sapphire blue. Dan locked his metaphorical grip in place, and tugged for all he was worth. He popped back into reality, and immediately blinked backwards once more, reappearing at the base of the stairs, minus his cargo.

There was a heartbeat of silence, followed by a deafening bang. Air rustled Dan's jacket, and a bundle of something light smacked against the back of his head. He turned around to face the room. What once was a cleaned out space was now covered in paperwork and bits of old electronics. It looked like a storm had been set loose in a mail room.

Only Anastasia stood unruffled, with a circle of clear space around her. She stared at the mess beyond her with a sigh, and asked, "There's really no way for you to contain that?"

Dan shrugged, entirely unperturbed by the mess. "I figure its better to stick with what works. Given how important you claim these caches are, do you really want me experimenting with them?"

She sighed. "I suppose not." She pulled a phone out of her pocket and sent a brief text. "You're done here, Newman. Get going."

That was all the permission he needed. Dan turned away, already planning out his next stop, when a stray thought brought him to a halt. He glanced over his shoulder, watching as Anastasia's men began to piece together the mess.

"Are you actually getting anything out of all this?" he asked curiously, waving towards the room. "I've done three of these now. I was sorta expecting to see some major arrests, or the People getting pulped on national television, but..."

The Summers' matron regarded briefly, visibly deciding whether to dismiss him or not. After a long moment, she declared, "The People as an official organization have been officially dead for decades. Arrests would lead to trials, and that is not an option. There's no point airing dirty laundry to the nation. They are being dealt with slowly and quietly. The last thing the country needs is to give these zealots a chance to proselytize."

Her casual disregard of the rule of law was mildly disturbing, though nothing new at this point. Dan simply bobbed his head, unwilling to get into an argument with someone so set in her beliefs. "Fine. Would it be too much to ask that you tell me when it's done? This affects me too, you know, if only a little bit. Abby is living with me." That last bit was more to poke the bear than deliver any real news. Dan savored the mild irritation that crossed Anastasia's face at the reminder.

"You'll know what you need to know," the old woman replied acidly. "Your concern should lay closer to home. There's a gang war brewing in that city of yours, last I heard."

Dan shrugged. He had enough friends in the police department to know that she wasn't exactly wrong, though he knew few details. He didn't really want to know. Not like he could do anything about it.

Gauche as it was to admit out loud, Dan was a fairly affluent white guy, dating an insanely rich heiress, and living in an upper-class suburb. Under normal circumstances, he'd never even know a gang war was going on unless someone explicitly mentioned it to him. There was virtually no way for such a thing to have an impact on his life. Dan, however, was also a crisis volunteer. If things got too out of hand, he very well might be called in to the aftermath.

He hoped that wouldn't be necessary. Like many of his hopes, that seemed rather unrealistic.

"I don't suppose you wanna pass along anything about that?" Dan asked.

Anastasia grimaced. "Abigail has made it abundantly clear that I'm to stay out of her affairs. So long as she's kept out of danger, I have no reason to care about what goes on in your city." She eyed him with flinty eyes. "Look out for her, boy. She's perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but I expect you to try anyway."

Dan rolled his eyes, blatantly and openly, then spun away into t-space. Dan had better things to do than be belittled by Anastasia Summers. Abby was coming home soon, and he had a party to plan.