History:"The guys back in the office called me Gumshoe. In fact, most of the west coast knew me by that name for the work I did with The Aegis." The miniscule man explained, a dead weight in his voice- the weight of exhaustion. "I don't know how many times I have to tell you this same story, the details never change. You're not gonna learn anything new from it, you had it on record before ever getting my input."
"Just tell the story." a harsh voice commanded from across the table to the man in his little mesh cage. Gumshoe rubbed both eyes with his hands and let out a sigh.
"Alright, chief, I'll dance your tune. How far do I need to take it back?"
The man crossed his legs and stared at the diminutive Gumshoe. He leaned forward and stared into the mesh cage on the table and peered around as if studying a fascinating insect.
"Start with the riot."
"Which one?" Gumshoe's smug tone was swiftly demolished as the much larger man slammed a newspaper down onto the table. Its headline read 'U.S. SOLDIERS BRUTALLY PUT DOWN RIOTERS IN SAN FRANCISCO' with the subtitle of 'Emergent Activist Oppression Continues In America'. It was an editorial that Gumshoe himself had written, and his name was plastered onto the article with gusto.
"...Oh. That one."
--San Francisco, California. December 2012--
"This is tense as hell out here, Gumshoe."
That was Dolph, Randolph Zebrowski. He was Gumshoe's 'handler', people joked. In truth, Dolph was his senior journalist and good friend- as far as bosses went anyway. Whenever shit went down local, Dolph handled it. He had his feet in the doors of the police, the judiciary system, the penal system, and, though it was never confirmed, how he got the scoop on some of these more scandalous of issues had to be due to some connection to the shady under-world of California. Gumshoe was half unsure why he was even needed here.
"Got your faraday, kid?"
"Am I an amateur, boss?" Gumshoe's immediate, slick, response came easy. ''Course I got faraday." He slapped a hand discreetly against the breast of his jacket, where on the inseam he had tailored in the material known as 'faraday'. Of course, it wasn't the entire lining of the jacket, but it was enough to create a sizeable pouch. And within that pouch was his backup camera. His nickname, 'Gumshoe', came partly from this jacket- this oldschool, heavy, noir jacket. It was almost like his utility belt.
"Just making sure, I'd throttle ya if you didn't." Dolph's heavy-set frame pushed through the crowd. In his hands was a large black case, which he carried close to his body. "Because I brought the drone, and with how these DHS guys moved in I'm sure it'll get downed in half a minute. That means you need to get where the action starts."
"Dolph. How many times have we done this." Gumshoe shook his head. "You'll chatter to the swat-man, I'll get let through, I'll slip into a nook somewhere with my little camera, and we'll sell tons of news." he laughed, but his laughter died at Dolph's serious expression.
"Kid, this is big. Bigger than Big Government and the DHS- this is the brink of the kind of shit you and I only read about in school. These Emergents? They're still people, yeah, but they're shaking the can up something fierce. I mean look- last time I saw crowds like this... I can't remember the last time I saw crowds like this!"
And Gumshoe glanced about. He had to admit, he'd never seen something like this either- only the anti-war protests of the 60's came to mind, but those all moved east... This monstrosity of a protest had moved west, flocking to California and its liberalism. There were thousands of people in these streets, and it was quite difficult for him to hear Dolph over their screams--
'EMERGENT RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS'
'OUR CHILDREN AREN'T LAB RATS'
'PROTECT AND SERVE, NOT ISOLATE AND VIOLATE'
'SET THEM FREE!'
Gumshoe shook his head and adjusted his grip on the camera he carried in his left hand. In his right he carried a vocal recorder.
"Alright big guy, I'll take this serious. Get me up there..."
~~~
Dolph lead Gumshoe through the crowds up to the police line, which was being pressed by protestors and soon-to-be-rioteers. a SWAT line of shields held the writhing mass back, and a large military vehicle stamped with the Department of Homeland Security logo threatened the mass with its large dish-like tool. It was a sonic weapon, meant to incapacitate huge crowds like this should they become unruly. A few words changed mouths, a shake of the hands ensued, and Gumshoe found himself behind the police line rather than in front of it.
He was escorted to the front of a stage.
This stage was hastily constructed but had massive speakers and large amounts of personnel guarding it. Gumshoe was escorted across the front of this stage, then made to sit in the darkness behind a large spotlight where he had poor visibility. Gumshoe kicked back, leaned heavily in his chair, and stuffed his hands down into his jacket's pockets.
He just needed to wait. The show would start once the sun set.
~~~
The sun had set, and the spotlights had kicked on- blasting the crowd back with its heavy light. Tension had been brewing considerably throughout the city, and the entire section had been quarantined off and blocked in by SWAT and National Guard alike. The DHS had gained much sway and power in the recent months since Emergence became wide-spread, and an example of their might was this very blockade. Thousands of people blocked into this protest area- all because one man declared he would address the issue of Emergence and the issue of the internment camps springing up.
When the spotlights sprang into life, Gumshoe sprang to his feet. Nobody would be able to see behind the bright spotlights, and even if anyone WAS looking they'd be blinded by the sudden lights. Gumshoe sprang to his feet and briskly broke away from the spotlight, and discreetly positioned himself behind the stage- swiftly sliding his recorder into the faraday pouch of his jacket. He then shut his eyes and waited. He didn't have to wait long.
Loud 'woomps' resounded throughout the air, and everything within the DHS' quarantined zone that was electronic suddenly shut off or fried. The police had co-ordinated and done a near city-wide shut-down and EMP. But still the spotlights blazed and the military-grade equipment of the police and DHS still functioned.
The crowd roared and surged forward, only to be pressed back by gas canisters and bean-bag rounds. He new Dolph was getting video of that, what Gumshoe was back here for was the special things- the things that only the Aegis could provide. And that was the truth.
He swapped his dead camera for the fresh one in his faraday pouch, and once more gripped the voice recorder in his hand. He toyed with its mechanism for a moment, until he heard a voice clearing and the crackle of a microphone popping into life.
He pressed 'record', and set the device securely against the stage to catch all sounds. Gumshoe strode along until, still caste in shadow, he could see who was upon the stage. He lifted his camera, and it silently took a few pictures of the imposing, military, man.
It was a member of the DHS, who had declared he would address these claims and issues in an attempt to quiet down the fires of protest. His name was Gregory Alexander, and before now he was a nobody. After today, he'd be an infamous nobody thanks to Gumshoe.
The speech began as you'd expect- vicious insults were thrown, requests for silence were made, and eventually the crowd quietted enough and calmed enough for the man to speak.
And, boy, was his speech terrible.
He made all the cliche, dumb, useless arguments about national security and possible threats. He made all the mistakes that needed to be made. He might've been a good soldier, a man who cared about his country and could follow orders, but after his speech people were more embroiled and enraged than ever before. The SWAT lines were actually pushed back, and Gregory turned off the microphone and barked an order that was never meant to be heard.
The words that Gregory Alexander said that day were the words Gumshoe used to write the article he would stare down in an internment camp months later. The words Gumshoe recorded that day were incriminating and damning and contradicting all later attempts to cover up the event...
The words were 'Put these idiots down, sergeant'.
What happened next was only to be expected.
~~~
Gumshoe bit his his tongue and hid behind the stage as Gregory Alexander made his hasty escape into the armored vehicle he arrived in on. He ducked back around and grabbed up his recorder, safely putting it into his faraday pouch, and moved back into the shadows of the stage.
That's when he had to stop and stare for a moment.
He raised his camera just as the massive vehicle, with the powerful sonic weapon, blared into power and began to smash people down to the ground as they rushed forward. Gumshoe took several pictures with relative swiftness. He needed to clear the streets or else he'd be put down like the others.
He felt the phone in his faraday pouch vibrate. Dolph.
Gumshoe sprinted away from the stage as a mass of people surged over the Swat-line, through the gasses and the bean-bag pellets, and even through the power of the sonic weapon.
Gumshoe was glad he chose to ran when he did, because as he glanced back and lifted his camera, bracing in the doorway of n appartment that had been cleared for this event, he saw something rather drastic.
The sonic weapon repelled all who came forward, except for a few. And Gumshoe thought, at first, that his eyes were tricking him- but then he realized what was happening. These few were Emergent, and the passion and stress of the crowd was pushing them forward. The sonic weapon blasted against one man, who fell to the ground only to push himself back up. Thick hair was all over his arms and neck, and his hands had become vicious and elongated into claws. It was a miracle he had stayed hidden so long.
Another man strode slowly through the weapon's range with confidence, each step making heavy indents into the ground.
Another woman screamed, having been tossed to the ground and was becoming trampled upon by the surging of the crowd- only her scream was so loud Gumshoe could hear it over the entire crowd, the power of the sonic weapon, and the barking orders of the police. It was so loud his head became quite dizzy, and he was sure it tampered with the frequency of the Sonic Weapon allowing more people to surge forward.
The next picture he saw was the massive armored vehicle being tipped over by Emergents and mundanes alike, before he ducked into the building and raced up the stairs.
The next picture he took, from an abandoned living room four floors up, was a series of helicoptor floodlights and gaseous containers raining down into the crowds. He finally checked his phone, and called Dolph back.
"--Goddamnit kid are you alright?!"
"Yeah, yeah, just had to get up to some high ground. How's the drone?"
"It got taken down by a sniper a few blocks up, though Gloria said she got the feed and she's salvaging the video."
"Thank God for Gloria." Gumshoe laughed.
"You said it, kid. Now, where are you...?"
Gumshoe rode the rest of the riots and protesting chaos out in the safety of the fourth floor appartment, and he spent the next week afterward in a jail cell being processed until Dolph could get him out. Being caught within the protest zone had rendered him, isntantly, 'a part of the protest' despite his press ID. He'd been in these situations before, though, and it wasn't anything new to him.
~~~
One week later, Gumshoe's article on the intentional violence on behalf of the DHS and the assault against the protestors made national coverage.
---Modern Day---
"So you witnessed the extreme acts of the Emergents firsthand on that day, Carlisle." the man said in a dry tone. "You can understand why camps such as this are necessary."
"Bullshit is why they're necessary. This is like rounding up every student in the country and slapping handcuffs on them because one or two decided to shoot up the school." Gumshoe bit back.
The man splayed his hands and shrugged, uncaring for the analogy or implications.
"Emergents are a threat to our national security, Carlisle, and the morals be damned. Every day more people die while others...discover their Emergence. More people get hurt. One girl killed four teenagers because they 'wanted her to read from a book'. One man ripped his wife's head off because he got drunk and they argued. We need to lock them up and study them so as to keep the innocent population safe."
"Innocent, oh yeah, chief. Innocent. More innocent than people like me, who didn't ask for this shit and are being rounded up like cattle because of it?"
"Yes. More innocent. The masses of this country are scared. Your little riots on the west coast don't amount to anything compared to the fear reigning over the majority of the country. Your 'social justice' has its merits, but Emergents scare people. And that's why scary men like me are here to keep scary men like you in these camps."
A hand reached out and shook the cage Gumshoe was in.
"Tell me, Carlisle, what does it feel like to be that small?"
Gumshoe shook and clambered to his feet, bracing himself on the side of the cage.
"Ask your wife, she's more used to four inches than I am, chief." Gumshoe stared back defiantly at the much larger man, who pulled his hand back.
"You think you're funny. The only reason you aren't drugged is because you would die before we figured out how to shut you up." The man rose up, dusting his trousers off needlessly. "If I stepped on you, Carlisle, you'd very much resembled gum on my shoe."
"Oh. Yeah. Take you all day to think of that one?" Gumshoe sighed and moved back to the center of the cage.
"I assure you, your treatment will be exactly what you deserve while here. Do enjoy your stay, I'll have more questions for you soon."
---
"Alright, Chief, what's up?"
Gumshoe kicked back in his small plastic chair, which more than likely came from some children's toy set, and folded his arms behind his head He stared up at the now-familiar face of the man who constantly questioned him.
"Why do you call me chief?" The man asked, forming a pyramid with his fingers.
"Because you're pretentious and people listen to you without really asking why. Hence, chief. Also fuck you." He added in the end, tilting his head.
"Noted." The man's voice was dry. "We have apprehended your friend 'Dolph Zebrowski' and gotten his statement about the special edition of the Aegis released on your birthday."
"I'm afraid you'll have to refresh my memory, chief, a lot of things happened on my birthday. I'm kinda an important guy, you know." Gumshoe feigned ignorance. The man didn't seem pleased with Gumshoe.
"Carlisle. For assisting you, we could declare Dolph a threat to national security for aiding and abiding a terrorist."
"Gumshoe. And if you do that, you'll have the biggest newspaper of the west coast riding your ass. Wait until this election season, you'll see where all your funding goes." Gumshoe rolled his eyes. "You and I both know you can't do shit to Dolph, he's too big. You're lucky you bagged me."
"Yes. We are lucky, aren't we. If you hadn't walked into our arms we might never have found you, Carlisle. Now. Let's go back to the January 4th edition of The Aegis."
Once more a newspaper was slammed down onto the table and Gumshoe had to rise up to read it. He grimaced.
'A Warning To The People' - A Timothy Gumshoe Article
Subtitle: 'Look out for your loved ones'
"It's pretty clear what I meant by that one, chief. It's pretty damn clear."
"Oh yes. Yes it is Carlisle. Allow me to quote you-- 'You need not worry about the constitution nor the bill of rights anymore, because the Department of Homeland Security has ripped these sacred documents to shreds and now invades your homes freelly, revokes your right to habeas corpus freelly, now privatizes security freelly, now controls your lives freelly.'... I don't find these words very flattering, Carlisle." the man leaned forward to peer into the cage. "Especially not what came next; 'We are in a Reign of Terror, not a revolution as some would say. Our Robespierre comes in the form of people like Gregory Alexander and [Insert the name of the head of the DHS here], and our guillotine in the form of 'National Security'.'...Now, Carlisle, that doesn't make you sound very patriotic now does it?"
"I'm sorry to say that I hold a contrarian opinion. You're violating my basic human rights- everyone here's basic human rights. Where are our lawyers? Our juries?"
"Ah. Human rights, Carlisle. Human rights. We aren't so sure you lot are... human anymore." the man's smirk pained Gumshoe deeply and the man grimaced and growled.
"Now let me read on. This next bit is my favorite. 'Our only salvation from the coming fascism is our love of liberty and our love of life. Do not let our fear of the unknown bring about the rise of a new age Hitler. Emergence is only the next trial we face as a nation. I look back on America's history and I see a people who have, time and time again, fought for the liberation of the oppressed. I don't want to see our culture, our lineage, our namesake, thrown in the trash out of fear of a new challenge.
As a great man once said, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
This is Gumshoe signing out, you won't be hearing from me again for a while. Stay safe, stay informed. - Timothy Carlisle, The Aegis'.
Now isn't that just inspiring, Carlisle?"
The man's laughter made Gumshoe sick to the stomach. He sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. when he opened them again he looked up at the man.
"Who are you?" He finally asked, curiosity finally overcoming his bluster and fight.
"Maximillien Robespierre, according to you o' wise journalist." He smiled severely
----January 5th, 2013----
Gumshoe was on a train out of California something fierce. He had a few thousand dollars in cash in his pockets and luggage, a gift from Dolph after he announced his Emergence and intentions to flee before he was found out. Gumshoe was contemplating heading out of the country, but before he could he had one more thing he needed to do.
He had shrunk down about a foot by now, and people had noticed before he even declared his Emergence. They simply liked him too much and were willing to ignore it. And he noted his shrinking was speeding up more and more as time went on, and he was running out of time. Soon he wouldn't fit in anywhere, disguised or not.
He needed to get information on what was going on in Nellis, in the internment camp of internment camps. He needed to see the truth got out about Emergent treatment.
So that's where he was heading.
---Modern Day---
"Alright Robespierre, where's my guillotine then?" Gumshoe snapped. "Off with my head. Do it, why don't you?"
"Because, that'd be inhumane to put you down. We're better than that. We're studying you, the changes you're going through. The fact we can't drug you makes you an incredible source of information. You can tell us what you feel without us prodding you. If you'd try and replicate what the labs have seen you do, you could save us years of research and experimentation."
"And help you militarize them? What, you gonna use us to end the Iraq War? Throw us into the middle east and wait for us to explode?" Gumshoe raved, throwing his hands out in exasperation.
"No, nothing so droll. We're just going to study you, see what the people want with what we find. We're not so impatient and callous as to make their decisions for them. Why don't you tell me about why you came to Nellis?"
"To get the truth, chief. To get the truth. It's always been my goal in life to get the truth." Gumshoe said with a sigh.
"How does the truth feel, carlisle?"
---January 8th, outside Nellis AFB---
One train ride, an expensive flight, and a rushed drive in a rental car later, and Gumshoe, in his iconic coat, was standing in the desert heat with a hat pulled on over his head.
He'd looked at maps, frantically memorized them, and knew he was walking into his own prison- or worse, into his own funeral. They'd catch him, there was no way in HELL he could sneak into this place and back out. But he HAD to know the truth about the way these people were treated. And if that meant he got captured, experimented on, studied, and locked up... Well, the next thing on his to-do list was to survive. If he could survive, he could escape. If he kept shrinking he might eventually become so small they can't contain him. If that happened, he'd be able to get information to Dolph- to anyone back at The Aegis, to get word to the world.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and strode forward towards the Air Force Base.
He would survive, Timothy Gumshoe Carlisle wasn't a wastrel or a coward. He had the constitution and Bill of Rights memorized, as well as every ammendment. He knew none of that mattered, but he still believed in those values of his country, and he knew that if he held onto them they couldn't ever break him.
Once a patrol caught him, he surrendered willingly.
---Modern Day---
"The truth hurts. The truth makes me feel disgusted that the American Government has allowed this to happen. The truth makes me feel angry. The truth will be my weapon when I get out of here and spread the word. There'll be fire in this country again, chief, just you wait. You can't keep me in here forever. Even if I die in this camp, word will get out, and you'll think back to me when you get sacked and exiled. Gumshoe ain't done yet, you've got me beat but not broken."
"Oh? Well, last I checked..."
the man leaned down and studied Gumshoe.
"You're the one in the box, and I'm the one with the key. Enjoy General Population, Gumshoe, I'm sure I've got some of your fans locked up in there.'
