by A and E Kirk
“But why? Were you suffering high levels of humiliation?”
Matthias rolled over and sat up, leaning back on his hands. Jayden remained next to Aurora while looking at Matthias with an earnest expression.
Finally, Matthias said, “Maybe.”
“That is absurd,” Jayden said. “You kept your word to a teammate, my brother, who is sleeping well for the first time in days. Maybe weeks. And you provided comfort for our friend.”
“Your friend. Not mine.”
“Perhaps. But that ‘friend’ also happens to be the Divinicus. Your actions are honorable, and I, for one, am impressed by your diligent actions directed toward her comfort, and my brother’s. So therefore, I thank you.”
“You can thank me by not telling anyone.”
“If that is your wish. Although I still challenge the logic of your emotions.”
“Emotions don’t always follow logic.”
“I am comprehending that all too well these days,” Jayden said. “Which is why I am so worried about him.”
Matthias nodded. “Me too.”
“I am struggling with what measures to take in regards to rectifying the situation. Do you have any plans?”
“For now, just keep her safe.” Matthias stood and eyed Aurora. “Can’t believe she’s still sleeping. I’m going to get out of here before she wakes up.”
“I don’t anticipate her consciousness any time soon. According to her vitals, she has actually entered into an even deeper sleep since we have been talking.”
“Weird,” Matthias shrugged. “But that’s Aurora. So you’ll stay with her until I get back? I want to try contacting Tristan again.”
“Yes. I still have work to do and will make another attempt to wake her. I have a strong level of confidence that I am on the verge of a breakthrough with the cipher. May I have my light back to working order?”
Matthias flicked a finger and the flashlight burned bright. Then with Sadie in tow, Matthias left as Jayden flipped through his multitude of papers. An hour later, Matthias returned. He found Aurora and Jayden sleeping peacefully, with Jayden snuggled up against Aurora’s back. Matthias fought the temptation to take a picture, only because he worried a flash might wake them up.
Instead, he went back to his room and tried to contact Tristan. But the Hex Boy didn’t answer. Matthias nervously tapped the cell phone against his palm. If he called Novo and asked Tristan be brought to a phone, he might blow whatever operation Tristan was running. Concern overrode Matthias’ hesitation, and he dialed Novo.
It was Tristan. Of all the Hex Boys, Tristan was the least likely to take risks without backup. Which meant if he hadn’t checked in, it wasn’t by choice. Novo put Matthias on hold while they contacted Tristan. But as seconds dragged to minutes, Matthias knew he wasn’t going to be able to sleep.
While he changed out of his pajama’s, Novo came back on the line.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Matthias said, his heart pounding with rising fear. “Then where the hell is he?”
OPERATION:
This is Why We Don’t Do Solo Missions
LOCATION:
Novo Sub-Basement
A sharp blow knocked Tristan off the bed. He landed on a filthy floor and banged his head against broken tiles. Fingers to his skull, he felt blood. He blinked to clear his head and looked around.
Hospital room. Old. Dirty. No windows. Brown water stains ran down the peeling walls. The flickering fluorescent lights revealed cracks in the ceiling and more stains. A blurry figure stood in the doorway, blocking the only exit.
“Careful. She wants him alive for now.”
“He won’t tell us anything.”
“She sent for Dr. Oser. He will extract the information we need.”
Cold hands hefted Tristan off the floor. The clawed hands belonged to a haptogian mol, among the ugliest of hellions. Crooked lines of green veins bulged over leathery skin, a dull, dirty gold color and covered with warts. The protruding Neanderthal forehead sloped over deep-set reptilian eyes.
Tristan cringed at the sight of the star-shaped mouth with too many worm-like tongues that constantly flicked in and out, leaving dribbles of saliva on its chin. Thick raptor feet and hands, and a long tail that swished across the tile floor completed the part reptile, part deadly dinosaur look. It could be the starring villains in one of his favorite sci-fi shows.
But this wasn’t TV, and if he didn’t do something soon, he’d be dead.
Tristan threw a harsh elbow into its face. The demon growled and slammed a clawed fist into Tristan’s nose. Twice. Tristan saw dots of white and collapsed. He barely felt the prick of the needle in his neck. Between the pain and the drugs, he couldn’t resist when the demon lifted him up and dumped him onto the bed.
Tristan drifted in and out of consciousness. Time stretched on. He had no idea how long he’d been here. The world was a mash of muted color and blurred figures. He heard voices, but struggled to understand them.
A hard slap to the face jarred him more fully awake.
A demon’s ugly mug filled Tristan’s vision. “How did you find Heather? Who else knows she is here?”
“Did you tell your team?” another voice rasped.
Tristan squinted at the demon looming inches from him. He tried to gather his powers. He could alter their minds, get them to release him.
The demon blinked. Then growled and slammed a fist into Tristan’s gut. Again. And again. “You can’t brainwash your way out of this one,” it snarled.
Tristan gasped for breath. Halted whimpers escaped his lips.
“Answer us and this all stops.” The demon grasped Tristan’s hair and yanked his head back to hover a needle a breath away from the Hex Boy’s blue eyes. “Did you tell anyone that there are demons in Novo?”
Demons in Novo. Tristan lived next-door to a demon detector and yet had walked right into a demon’s nest. It wasn’t terribly funny, but Tristan found himself laughing at the thought. The creature struck Tristan again, but despite the dire situation, the drugs that made him too weak to fight back, made him too delirious to stop cackling, as his consciousness faded once again.
He later woke to silence. He wasn’t sure if he’d been sleeping or merely come out of whatever haze the drugs had put him under, but Tristan felt alert. Finally.
He looked around at the empty room. After several minutes his head finally cleared. He sat up. A little dizzy, but he stood and walked on wobbly legs toward the door.
A peek out showed no sign of life, but voices came from the right, so he snuck out and turned left. He slunk down the hall, his head swiveling in front of him and behind, watching for danger as he made sure to stay quiet.
“Hey, blue eyes! What are you doing here?” said a loud voice.
Startled and still unsteady on his feet, Tristan almost fell. In a room across the hallway, Heather tried to wave but a restraint keeping her hands attached to another filthy hospital bed made it difficult.
“Are you my new nurse? You are so much cuter than the rest of them.”
“Shhh!” Tristan said, his finger to his bloody lips as he wobbled into her room. “Please be quiet,” he whispered, then leaned on a metal chair next to her bed as a wave of exhaustion hit him.
“Okay,” she whispered back. “As long as you promise not to give me any more treatments. Deal?”
She was certainly more lucid than in the Rec Room. Maybe she had less drugs in her system.
“What are your treatments?” he asked.
“You don’t know?” She snorted. “Well, if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you. Can you get me out of here? Like now?”
“Maybe. Where are we exactly?”
“The basement. It’s where I always get my treatments. It’s creepy.”
“You can say that again,” Tristan said, looking around.
Heather smiled brighter. “The basement. It’s where I always get my treatments. It
’s creepy.”
Tristan gave her a look. More lucid, yes, but still not all there.
“If you’re not my nurse, why are you down here?” She shook her wrist. The restraint rattled. “Can you get these off?”
“Um.” Tristan tried to focus, but his brain was still fuzzy.
“How did you find me? Here, in the basement. Where I always get my treatments? It’s—”
“Creepy.”
“Right?”
Tristan eyed the restraint, unsure if releasing her was a good idea.
“If you don’t know the way out, you’ll get lost,” she told him.
He didn’t doubt it.
“Do you know the way out?” he asked.
“Of course, I know, silly,” she said. “I just can’t remember. But maybe I can bang bang and shake it loose, shake it loose. I’ll try, try, try.” She leaned over and started pounding her fists against her head. “Try, try, try!” She pounded harder. Tristan worried she would hurt herself, plus her voice was rising, and he didn’t want to attract attention.
“Heather,” he said softly, taking her wrists. “It’s okay. Quiet down. Close your eyes and breathe for a minute.”
He instinctively used his powers to get into her mind to calm her, but the drugs kept his abilities too weak. So while he couldn’t change her mind, he could get inside it, and what he saw left him stunned.
The damage was catastrophic. So much broken in her head because someone had gone crashing through Heather’s memories looking for answers.
As a Hallucinator, Tristan could see someone’s thoughts and memories. Everyone was different. Sometimes scenes played out like snippets of a film running continuously. Sometimes memories were kept behind doors, or in rooms of elaborate buildings. Or trap doors in fields. Or tunnels. Some people created fantastical places full of inhuman colors, creatures, and structures. There were a million different variations.
But in Heather’s case, he couldn’t be certain how her mind had organized itself because now it was like walking through a war zone. An apocalyptic landscape of destruction. When Dr. Jones couldn’t find what she was looking for, she must have trashed that section and moved on to the next, and then the next, without any attempt to repair or minimize the destruction.
Tristan had never seen anything like this. He knew this kind of damage was possible, but the thought that anyone would do this on purpose to another human being was unthinkable, irresponsible, and downright cruel.
Plus, he usually only dealt with fresh memories, trying to make someone forget something they had recently experienced. From the looks of things, Heather’s mind had been destroyed far deeper. Years into her past. Perhaps a decade or more. He couldn’t be sure unless he went there too, but that was too much of a risk, a level of mind infiltration which could change the essence of a person’s being.
To do that was so very wrong. An intense anger overwhelmed him.
Then a horrible thought hit him with brutal shock. Is this what he had done to his father all those years ago?
Feelings of anger flashed quickly into shame which stung deep and left him nauseous. Then fear overcame him. Followed by humiliation. Then back to fury.
He closed his eyes and tried to fight the high-speed emotional rollercoaster that began again. Whatever drugs they had given him were seriously messing with his ability to control his thoughts and feelings.
He took several deep breaths. Felt calmer, but didn’t know how long that would last.
One of Heather’s nurses rushed through the door. Heather screamed. Tristan grabbed the metal chair and swung it hard.
Much to his surprise, the force knocked the nurse to the floor. Tristan raised the chair for another blow, determined to knock him out while he was down, but another nurse burst in, grabbed the chair from Tristan and swung at his head. Tristan ducked too slow. The blow to the back of his head left him stunned. He fell forward. Before he hit the ground, demons grabbed him, dragged him down the hall, and shoved him into a chair.
Tristan tried to stand. A punch snapped his head sideways and sent another wave of pain through his skull. Things went fuzzy again.
“Enough,” Nurse Tank said as he cruised into the room. “The rest of his team are on their way here to find him. I’ll talk to them topside, throw them off the trail. You gather everyone else and make sure you all stay down here out of sight. And be ready.”
Tank left. The hellions dumped Tristan on a lumpy mattress and shackled him to the bed. He tried to fight, but aches and pains and exhaustion kept him from making any progress. However, as he drifted off, a vague smile curved his lips.
Backup was on their way.
OPERATION:
Worst Divinicus Ever
LOCATION:
Novo Sub-Basement
Tristan woke from what felt like a more normal sleep rather than a drug induced slumber. Still unclear about how much time had passed, he felt more like himself. In control. His powers stronger.
Maybe not full strength, but if he was awake when the demons returned, he felt confident he could manipulate their minds, get himself out of here, and warn everyone.
But he knew he still had drugs in his system, because he wasn’t scared.
He laughed. Grandma and Grandpa would like that. He had to remember to tell them. But it might not be just the drugs. The Hex Boys were coming for him. And when they found him, it was the demons who should be scared.
Tristan pulled against the shackles, but they held tight.
Something shook the building. He opened his eyes. It was more of an explosion than an earthquake, which meant it wasn’t Blake. Were the demons going to blow up the basement to hide evidence? He’d probably be buried alive and then no one would find him.
“Right!” a girl screamed. “We go right!”
A loud crash and the room shook again. Then a bang and the sound of water. Lots of it. Gushing. Pouring. Another loud sound. Like glass shattering into a million pieces. The walls shook.
Tristan struggled against the straps holding him down, but they held tight. If this place collapsed, he was a goner.
Then the stench of dead demons wafted in the air.
“It’s only a matter of time before they reroute,” he heard Jayden say. “We must hurry. Aurora, how could you miss such an agglomeration of demons?!”
Tristan smiled and relaxed back onto the bed. It was about time.
“Hey,” Ayden said. “Give her a break.”
Someone grabbed the grimy green curtain next to his bed to wipe off their leather jacket. Ayden loved that thing. Well, it had been through a boatload of battles. And it did look cool.
“You are the most atrocious Divinicus Nex ever,” Jayden groaned.
“Pfft,” Tristan said. “You’re telling me.”
After a brief pause, the curtain flung aside.
Aurora, Ayden, and Jayden stared at him. Aurora’s pale skin paled even more. Almost Logan-worthy. She looked utterly distraught for a moment. Terrified. Then anger flashed in her stormy blue eyes.
Tristan blinked and started to smile, but his lip hurt, and he tasted blood, so he went for casual nonchalance, hoping to ease their fears.
“A little heads-up would’ve been nice,” he said. “You know, before I walked into a building infested with haptogian mols. I thought I didn’t have to worry about this stuff with a demon detector living next door.”
They didn’t look completely relieved, but seemed to calm down. Ayden almost cracked a grin.
“I agree,” Aurora said, her voice tight. “Let’s file a complaint with the guy who gives out the manuals on powers.”
Ayden and Jayden grinned and gave him reassuring slaps before they headed out into the hallway looking for more demons to destroy. Fine by him.
“Maybe I was a bit distracted,” Aurora snapped. She struggled to unbuckle the straps holding him down because her hands shook fiercely. “Trying to stay alive while Cristiano was trying t
o kill me at school because someone couldn’t figure out the Sicarius team was already in Gossamer Falls days ago.”
Tristan jolted upright. “Cacciatori?!”
“Oh, no worries,” she said, heavy on the sarcasm. “You know how I like to cram a month’s worth of drama and doom into one day.”
As she finished her account of the near miss of death with Cacciatori and Horus, Tristan said, “More like a year’s worth.”
“Yeah,” Aurora grinned. “I’m an overachiever.”
OPERATION:
We Need Help, But Why Him?
LOCATION:
Novo
The female guard led Matthias, Logan, and Blake through Novo’s security center, a large room with the low-level hum of men and women working on computers, studying live feeds of the compound, talking on the phone, and shuffling through paperwork. She led the three Boys into a smaller room, empty of people but holding a desk, chair, and three computer monitors.
“I wouldn’t worry,” the guard said. “His dad told us your friend was hanging out with some girl. He probably spent the night with one of the nurses. Not the first time. He’ll turn up.” She paused. “You sure you don’t want me to check the footage and help you find him? I could use some facial recognition software to speed things along.”
“No, thanks,” Matthias said. “We’ve got this.”
“Okay. The security feeds are queued up. Let me know when you’re done.” She left, closing the door behind her.
Matthias stood back and folded his arms. “All right, get at it. Let’s see what you can find.”
Logan and Blake looked at each other, then at Matthias.
“Us?” Logan said.
“Yeah,” Matthias said. “Go through the security footage over the last twenty-four hours and track down Tristan.”
“Dude, we thought you were going to do it.”
“Why would I do it?”
“Because,” Logan said. “Since Mr. Grant said Tristan had gone to talk to ‘some girl’ we know is Heather and not a nurse, you sent Jayden with Ayden to track her down.”