"So you agree that the twitching is important?" Lillian confirmed.
"Absolutely. I don't know what it signifies, but the fact that we both had it at pretty much the same frequency at the same time is a giveaway. And whatever it is, I think it's linked to him." Galena's voice sounded scratchy through the phone.
"And just one more question- has Erica or anyone else been able to figure out what thaumaturgy he was using?"
"As for that, I have some bad news."
"What?"
"Apart from the stuff he did before he broke out, nothing that he did has been traceable."
"And?"
"First of all, that's not even theoretically possible, efficacy or not. Second of all, that means we can't tell what any of it is. In order to do what he did, he would have to break through a barrier- which is also supposed to be impossible. Most of what I witnessed was probably just illusions, but apparently there's no discovered thaumaturgy capable of knocking a person out like that. And Erica says..."
"What did she say?"
"She wasn't even sure if it could be any particular field of thaumaturgy at all."
"Well, if it wasn't a specific field of thaumaturgy, then what on Earth was it?"
"We don't know."
Lillian glanced up briefly to ensure that her roommates were still engaged in a card game. "Can you elaborate?"
"We think it's a fifth area. Half the people here have already started calling it Fifth Wheel. From what we've seen, it's completely independent from the barriers field. We also thought it might be a subdivision of barriers capable of blocking tracing and breaking barriers which was being used along with telekinesis to do all of that, but that still doesn't explain how I got knocked out. After all, people have their own natural barriers, and after checking, no thaumaturgy or even external signs were traced to me, and my barrier was undisturbed."
"I'm sorry- Fifth Wheel?"
"Diane's idea, of course. She was saying it a bit scornfully, and she's still doubtful. But other people bought it at once. Erica, Rolf, Janelle. They're using it to justify so many different things that it's getting annoying. I feel like it's pretty negligent to just explain everything away like that without any real evidence."
"What do you think? It sounds like he might have used it to make our eyes..."
"Honestly, I'd have to go with Diane- I'm not sure. Right now we don't have enough evidence, and I think Erica is tailoring it to fit. Besides, she'd be the first in line to take credit for discovering a new field of thaumaturgy."
"Hey, Lillian! Want to play?" Daria called.
"Sure," Lillian called back, then spoke quickly into the phone. "Look, I have to go. If you have anything else to tell me, please call me later- I'll only be doing homework."
"Sounds good," Galena responded, and promptly hung up.
"Who was that?" Leslie asked, tilting her head to one side. The deck of cards hovered a few inches above the ground, dealing out three hands, but Lillian couldn't tell who was causing it to do so, since neither Leslie nor Daria were looking at it.
"Look, I have to tell you something, okay?" Lillian began. When she saw her roommates' nods, she continued. "All I can tell you is that for various confidential reasons I'm now getting updates on a confidential DIAO investigation. Essentially, calls whenever they figure something out. Next time I get a call from someone else I'll let you know, but usually it'll just be them."
"Okay..." Daria trailed off.
"And that means stop speculating!" Lillian grinned.
❧☙
Dakota was, for once, diligently grading papers in his office when he heard a knock on his door. "I have scheduled office hours," he muttered to himself.
"Dakota?" someone said outside. "Please open the door."
"I'm grading. Office hours are Tuesday and Thursday. Today's Saturday."
"Open the door."
Dakota clenched his teeth and looked back at the paper he had been grading, but he couldn't seem to concentrate anymore. He took a few seconds attempting to recall the answer to the third question, then, exasperated, gave up and walked over to the file cabinet, turning the key in the bottom cupboard and opening the door onto the screen. Before he was able to even turn it on, something unusual happened.
His eye twitched.
Immediately he put a hand to it, wondering if it was just the effect of stress, lack of sleep, or a combination of the two, but the fact that it had only happened once, coupled with the sound that followed, cleared all doubt in favor of the true cause. The lock clicked and Dakota heard the creak of the door as it eased open. Immediately he spun around, instinctively shielding the file cabinet, and stared at the figure silhouetted in the doorway. The hall lights flickered slightly.
"Who do you think you are, an embassy?"
"Don't you think an embassy would use thaumaturgy?" a young voice asked, and the figure stepped further into the room. Dakota realized that his visitor was not nearly as intimidating as he had expected, but merely a short young boy, gazing at him intently.
"What family are you from?" Dakota said, quickly and quietly.
"Neither you nor I have the time for you to be a dingbat." The boy shrugged. "I may not have been what you expected, but here I am, doing my job."
"Who-"
"I'm Rory Dunman, your new correspondent. Now I really can't make it any clearer, can I?"
Dakota's tense expression was washed over by a wave of confusion followed quickly by interest. "Why do I need a new correspondent?"
"Think about it for a minute. You were just in a cell and the DIAO still wants you for questioning. Ashley is busy evading questions herself and had extraneous responsibilities even while she was here."
"What about Mira?" Dakota responded somewhat harshly.
"We've all been telling you, Mira's busy."
"I know, but she hasn't talked to me at all."
"You should expect that." Rory leaned against the wall. "Her top concern right now is trying to avoid suspicion."
Dakota just sighed. "I miss her."
"After all of this, I promise, you'll have a chance to reconnect."
"She's the only family I have left."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Rory responded sharply, shooting an annoyed glance at Dakota, who looked away guiltily. He stepped over to Dakota's desk and began clearing away papers with sweeps of his arm. "Do you have a mirror somewhere here?"
"No-" Dakota began, but stopped when Rory's annoyed gaze traveled once more toward his face. "Well, I do, but they're in use."
"How many?"
"Two. It really doesn't matter, though, since I'm using them for something else."
"Are you telling me I need to go out on a Saturday morning and buy a mirror?"
"There's one coming in the mail, but it won't be here for another couple of weeks. Why do you need a mirror anyway?"
"I don't have anyone to stay with," Rory replied icily.
"Don't you live here?"
"I live in Portland. I came as soon as I knew you'd escaped."
"Well, in that case, there's a little bit of cash in the drawer- you can take that if you need to get anything."
"I don't need it." Rory shook his head and walked out of the room, the door slamming behind him. Dakota sighed and pulled a granola bar out from under his desk, tearing the wrapper and biting into the chewy surface.
As an extra precaution, he walked over to the front of his office and locked the door.
❧☙
"So can you explain Fifth Wheel again?" Galena asked, tilting her head perplexedly.
"Basically, it's a branch of thaumaturgy that's independent from barriers and tracing, so that type of thing just doesn't work on it. You can do pretty much anything with it."
"Including knock people out?"
"That's essentially just using telekinesis to mess with the brain, and since it's independent from barriers, you can do things to people."
"Even if this guy does have a high efficacy, you have to keep in mind that we don't have a clear enough picture of the brain to be able to do telekinesis that specifically, right?"
Rolf fidgeted in his seat. "Given that he already knows enough to be able to use Fifth Wheel, he probably knows a lot more than we do about other things, too."
"I don't understand what your point is."
"Fifth Wheel thaumaturgy hasn't officially been discovered yet," Rolf replied. "Maybe he is using it to learn about things we don't know about."
Galena nodded along, but on the inside, she didn't trust the idea.
"Hey, I just remembered what I wanted to tell you guys." Evan's voice floated into the conference room, followed quickly by his head appearing in the doorway. "You know that hand mirror case? I did the fingerprint test and the results came out the same as the key." Galena took a moment to reflect on the simultaneous, unspoken agreement that she and five of her coworkers had created to be able to further discuss the mystery on a Saturday.
"With or without the cut?" Diane responded immediately.
"Uh, with."
Rolf nodded. "That's what we expected, thank you." He turned away from the door.
"No it's not." Four pairs of eyes swiveled to stare at Galena. She looked down nervously. "If they buried it with him, then the last fingerprints should either have been rubbed off by gloves or those of whoever was the last person to touch it, like one of the police officers. The fact that we found the dead kid's prints means that he was the last one to touch it."
Diane opened her mouth slightly. "So what you're saying is that..."
"From the fingerprints? No, I'm not entirely sure they ever took that mirror case away. He was buried with it."
"Why would they do that?"
"Of course, it's possible that they could have used tweezers or something to pick it up, but..." Galena came to a sudden realization. "And just to make sure there's nothing else going on, I'll need the fingerprints of everyone here."
"You think it was me?" Evan wondered nervously.
"Not necessarily you. I just want to verify that we're not being tricked and misled again. I don't know how right now, but we need to eliminate everything before we start walking around adding this information to our files. We need to ask more people who actually know about these things before we jump to any conclusions. Essentially, we need to rule everything out that makes more sense before we veer onto the conspiracy theory track."
"Isn't this already a conspiracy theory?" Rolf muttered.
"Only if we tell ourselves that. We're here to gather evidence, not make up a story. The same thing goes for Fifth Wheel. Sure, it's a hypothesis, but we need to get proof before we accept anything that makes no sense."