“So? What do you see?” Thomas asked.

 

“Shhh… I heard something.” Caroline did a shush gesture and said.

 

Agent Hall and Thomas immediately went silent and looked around, waiting for some kind of sound, but hard as they tried, they could only hear the sound of other agents working in the other rooms or the sounds from the street.

 

“Did you hear someone calling my name?” Caroline asked: “And she sounds just like me - it’s like a whisper.”

 

“No.” Thomas and Agent Hall answered at the same time, shaking their heads.

 

“I DID hear some abnormal energy flows.” Agent Hall took a look at Thomas and the ceiling: “I think your standing tall here definitely triggered something in this room. Please be careful.”

 

Before she could respond, Caroline heard another call to her name from behind her. When she turned around, she felt that a thin energy blade made off the same dark energy remaining in the lanterns was launched from the thin line near the ceiling aiming right at her neck. But she was no ordinary Division agent, and before the energy blade could even reach her, she already reached out with her right hand, in an attempt to actually grab it.

 

When Caroline’s fingers and palm came into contact with the energy blade, it produced a sound similar to that made by a broken glass. The energy blade was shattered on impact, with broken pieces flying around her and hitting the walls around.

 

As the energy blade was completely demolished, one of the six bodies embedded in the walls, the one that was right beneath the position from which the energy blade shot out, let out a hoarse and throaty cry. The next second, the walls around the body cracked up a bit, exposing slightly more parts of the body.

 

“What happened?” Seeing that Caroline had already stepped down from his forearms, Thomas asked.

 

“The energy blade, it tried to attack me.” Caroline rubbed her hands together, like she was playing with marbles or play dough: “It did not succeed, and I grabbed a small piece of it.”

 

“Really? Can we see it?” Thomas asked.

 

Caroline relaxed her palm, and showed a curled up ball of energy construct - it was like a small ball of wet paper, with the edges of the original paper somehow painted red. And on the outside, they could see a mostly transparent orange and red membrane of energy, acting as a seal to suppress the construct and keep it in place and not dissipate.

 

“Can you hold for a second? I need to get my earbuds to filter it.” Agent Hall started tapping and adjusting his earbuds, and after a few seconds he said to Caroline: “Sorry, Ms. Baker, can you provide a small sample of the spell you just used? I need a sample to filter out the flow of your energy - oh, right, thanks!”

 

With Caroline’s help, Agent Hall quickly found the “sound” that was emitted by the curled up energy blade fragment. And then, he started using the special equipment assigned to him by the Division, combined with his ability to hear the flow of energy to record the “sound signatures” into his tablet.

 

“This is - pretty disturbing.” When Agent Hall opened a software and began using it to analyze the sound signature records, a very complicated wave graph with at least six or seven lights of different colors was shown on the screen.

 

“Right - what are we looking at?” Thomas asked.

 

“It’s a similar kind of energy signature that almost killed Phil, the other agent.” Agent Hall said, shaking his head: “I don’t know what happened - there’s no way it could regain power right? We’ve sealed off the perimeter, both Ms. Pei and Master Nameless cleansed the entire room themselves, and checked that there was no connected external energy source that could refuel it. And uh - there’s a little bit of difference, let me see - ”

 

“Unless, there’s a hidden line somewhere.” Caroline looked up at the metal mirror at the center of the ceiling, then the six bodies embedded in the walls, one of which just cracked, possibly due to Caroline grabbing and cracking the energy blade.

 

“Did any of the examiners say anything else about this room?” Thomas sighed and looked around at the bodies and asked.

 

“Oh, they haven’t come to examine the room yet. ” Agent Hall scoffed: “We’re another one or two weeks in the queue. San Francisco is still the top priority right now, and plus we have some very high profile gang violence cases. We have a theory that they serve as some kind of knots and nodes in this array, but - do you think they are the power source as well?”

 

“I don’t know - I couldn’t see or sense anything obvious from them. And I - gosh I should have paid more attention in the arrays and circles lectures.” Caroline rubbed her temples and said: “What else can you see on this graph?”

 

“Ms. Wong is really having a hard time getting the resources from the Division now, huh?” Thomas leaned closer to the body whose walls around it cracked up and said: “How could that be even after so much she’s done for the Division?”

 

“You were a civilian law enforcement officer right?” Agent Hall shook his head with a wry smile then zoomed in on the graph: “You think things are different when the supernatural is involved? ”

 

“Well, I wouldn’t say that in front of others.” Caroline kept her eyes on the graph shown on Agent Hall’s tablet: “Come on! Focus, what else can you see from this graph?”

 

“I’m sorry, I was just a little distracted - ” Agent Hall tapped the tablet a few more times and some kind of filter was applied to the graph, then some red lines connecting to different dots on the graph: “Here it is - you see the red lines?”

 

“Yeah? What? I am not familiar with this app, can you explain to me?” Caroline asked.

 

“The lines connecting to the different parts of the graph showed - well, you know, this entire graph showed the sound wave representation of an energy signature. You see, energy signatures are static, just like your fingerprint, but through some very interesting algorithms, this app transforms them into a wave representation, the X Axis here is the calculated weighted metric of the energy’s elemental properties as well as affinities to some other properties, and the Y Axis here is the signature’s strength, with an amplification exponent.”

 

“Okay, I understood some of that, but not all, can you summarize?”

 

“In short - according to this graph, the energy signature radiated from the graph had some very interesting changes ever since the last time, before the cleansing.” Agent Hall looked up and said: “The variations, if you can believe it, seemed to have come from the tainting from energy transfusion and piping magic - something that used to be relatively common several decades ago before the invention of insulation spells and artifacts.”

 

“And?” Thomas peeled off a small piece of the wall from nearby the body he was examining and asked: “I thought you guys shut this place down completely and made sure there was no connected energy source?”

 

“There’s apparently an unconventional one.” Caroline pointed at the metal mirror above.