“Everything you just saw could be yours on a much grander scale, but people won’t call you by some silly name and you won’t be anyone’s sidekick. You may never be known for the great work you’d do, but as part of my team…you’ll do more than just save lives from petty criminals. You’ll save people from themselves.”
Blake nodded. “When do we start?”
2-10 | Divergence
Quinn
“WELL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IT seems the local community is once again stunned by the second appearance of the world’s first potential superhero, infamously dubbed the Blue Spekter. Although public opinion about the vigilante is generally positive, local authorities continue to issue stern warnings against vigilantism, urging the public to let trained personnel do what they do best. Reporting live from downtown Portsmouth, I’m Camilla Brenhurst.”
The camera cut back to the newsroom, where news anchor Paula Anders introduced the next story. Quinn frowned at the mention of the police warnings.
Quinn and his dads watched the morning news before school and work, eagerly switching between the local and national news to hear what they had to say about Blue Spekter’s appearance yesterday. All of the news outlets were blown away with the indescribable experience of seeing a flying, super-powered human. This morning, all of the larger news stations were bringing in various subject matter experts—and the larger comic book houses—to help them understand the pros and cons of such a being in the world today.
“I still can’t believe I was there,” Quinn said, shaking his head, playing along with what he had already told his dads about his brief meeting with Keegan at the Market Square Starbucks.
Dad swallowed. “I’m glad you had the sense to run as far away from that man as you could get. I can’t believe people were standing around gawking at him. Anyone with half a brain should have known that was an explosive vest on his body.”
“Not everyone is as smart as you, hun,” Daddio said, winking at him from across the island. He plopped more eggs down on Quinn’s plate. “Eat up, track star, you look like you’re packing on muscle.”
Quinn nodded. “Toning up, for sure.” He had noticed his muscular structure changing over the past several weeks when he saw his reflection in the mirror each morning. He noticed Blake’s muscles had grown as well, and like his, they had become more defined without doing any extra weight-lifting at school.
“Track after school today?” Dad asked.
“Nope, a little extra tutoring with Mr. St. Germain for chemistry. I’m getting lost and he offered to help.”
Daddio smiled. “I’m really proud of you for seeking extra help. I mean, it’s not like we could help you with chemistry so…kudos to you for asking your teacher for more help.”
Quinn smiled. If only knew new what he was really teaching me?
❖
“Did you see what that blue guy did?” Ravone shouted as Quinn walked toward their usual before-school spot. “Were you working?”
“I ran away,” Quinn answered, laughing. “I knew something was going on and I didn’t want to get caught up in it.” Then he remembered the lie he told Keegan. Damn, this is going to get tricky…
“I had to meet up with my dad, so when I left Keegan…”
“What? You were with Keegan? Do tell!” Loren said, clapping his hands with excitement.
“Oh, yeah,” Quinn said, blushing. “Well, um…”
“Out with it already,” Ravone ordered.
“He asked me to the Homecoming Dance.”
“And what did you say?” Loren asked.
Quinn grinned from ear-to-ear. “I said ‘yes,’ silly.”
“Finally, our boy is becoming comfortable in his own skin.”
Quinn laughed with them, smiling at his newfound confidence. Maybe that’s a super power, too?
The bell rang, indicating it was time to get to first period. “Have you guys seen Blake yet?” Ravone asked, anxiously looking around for him.
I haven’t sensed him yet, and his bike isn’t locked up at the bike stand…
“No, I haven’t,” Quinn answered. “It’s weird. Uh, why do you ask?” Now, his interest was piqued.
“Oh, nothing,” Ravone answered, winking and smiling at him mischievously.
Quinn shook his head and decided it was better not to ask. You better not be getting sweet on him again.
❖
“Remind me of what your goal is, Blue Spekter?” Mr. St. Germain said, grinning. He sat back in his desk chair and folded his arms across his chest.
Quinn chuckled. They had shut themselves in the science lab after school to discuss what was going on in town, with the police, and with Blake.
He shifted in the chair-desk he had pulled up to the front of his teacher’s desk. “Well I mean, I thought I wanted to be a superhero, and I…”
Mr. St. Germain raised his hand and interrupted him. “Quinn, when we first spoke and you showed me how you could manipulate water, I didn’t need a super power to sense how excited you were at the prospect of becoming a superhero. I told you to be very careful about pursuing this path until we could learn a little more, so now that things are starting to happen, something’s changed. What’s changed for you? What’s getting in the way of your superhero dream?”
“Reality,” Quinn answered without hesitation.
“What about it?”
“The people love me, but the police…I saved that man’s life when he fell from the tower. I saved all those people from a homemade shrapnel bomb in Market Square, and the police want me to stop interfering. People would have died and got hurt. Why can’t the police see that?”
“They can see that, Quinn. They see everything you do, and possibly more. The difference is, they’re trained to think and respond to hostile and life-threatening situations. You aren’t. You have to think about it objectively; you reacted in both cases, just like you did with the toddler on Daniel Street.”
Quinn swallowed. “Yeah, you don’t have to remind me about that one. That guy could have gotten hurt really bad.”
Mr. St. Germain leaned forward. “Try to listen to what I’m about to say objectively. You need to hear the good and the bad about what you’re doing, even if you only think you’re doing good.”
“Okay,” Quinn answered, frowning.
“You’re right, no one got seriously hurt in all three events. The car you stopped—though a complete accident—could have gone in a different direction. If you had been one second slower at catching the falling man, would you be feeling the same way? If you weren’t able to get the man and his vest away from Market Square without the bomb going off, how many people would have gotten hurt—and would you even be alive? Do you know if you’re explosion proof?”
Quinn sighed. “But…”
“No buts, Quinn,” Mr. St. Germain said. “This is what is on the mind of the police and those trained to respond to crisis. I need you to try and see it from their point of view, because from where they sit, they now have a new, unpredictable element adding a lot of stress to their already stressful jobs.”
“Okay,” he muttered, staring at the floor.
“Look at me, Quinn.”
Quinn looked up at his teacher.
“Stay objective with me. They don’t know you, they have no idea who you are, what you stand for, and if you turn on them, whether they can stop you or not. They have no reason to trust you right now, and they have no idea there’s another super-powered person lurking in the shadows.”
“You mean Blake?”
Mr. St. Germain nodded. “Unless there’s someone else, yes. What do you think they’re going to do when they find out there’s two of you? Remember what Carmine Falcone told Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, ‘You always fear what you don’t understand.’”
Quinn smiled. “Okay, okay, I get it. We have to be willing to work with the police rather than undermine them.”
Mr. St. Germain shrugged. “That might work but be careful. If you get caught,
make no mistake, they will dissect you to figure out what makes you tick and try to control you because they’re afraid of you—even if they seem to trust you. That’s how it always plays out in the comic books. So, be careful, until you’re sure you’re bulletproof or something…be smart, okay?”
“I will.”
“Good, because I can’t wait for the day when Blue Spekter is welcomed by everyone, even the police. Speaking of which…your alter ego is gonna need some kind of costume.”
Quinn laughed. “I’ve been thinking about that myself.”
❖
Blake
The black SUV drove past the familiar white building at Orgonon to a stone house with blue trim set on the far side of a field he remembered seeing when he and Quinn snuck onto the property.
“We’re here,” one of the men said, putting the vehicle into park.
Blake stepped out of the black SUV, stretched his legs and back, and walked up to the front door of the house. His two escorts, men who remained nameless during the three-and-a-half-hour drive, provided idle conversation but they didn’t hold Blake’s interest for very long. To make matters worse, they opted to listen to news podcasts instead of music.
If only I could fly…I’d have flown here so much faster.
Victor opened the front door and greeted him. “Hello, Blake, welcome to Orgonon, officially.”
“Hey,” Blake answered, shaking his hand.
“This way, please.” Victor led him through the stone house-turned-museum to a room with wall-to-wall bookshelves.
“You’re kidding me!” Blake asked, scanning the room quickly. There were no other points of egress. “One of these bookshelves hides a secret door, right?”
Victor laughed. “Of course.”
He pulled on an inconspicuous brown, leather-bound book and an entire section of bookshelf rumbled as it slid back and to the right, allowing access to a hidden elevator. The door slid open and Victor stepped inside.
Blake, amused by the spectacle of the hidden passage way, followed him into the elevator. “I thought this stuff only happened in the movies.”
The elevator doors slid shut and the car descended. “Sometimes, inspiration can be drawn from movies, Blake. After all, if something is hidden right under your nose, you tend not to see it.”
“This is so cool.”
“Cool or not, what you’re about to see is top secret, Blake. You cannot tell anyone except Quinn what you will see and learn here today.”
“I can tell Quinn?”
“Yes, but only Quinn. I have hopes that he will change his mind about the work we do here. You have an important role in helping him understand why he needs to align his ambitions with ours. There’s too much at stake for him not to. I trust you will learn why today.”
The elevator stopped, and the doors slid open. Victor led him into a brightly lit, white-walled lobby with a reception desk at its center. The young Hispanic woman seated at the desk, wearing a black dress blazer over a white blouse with a silver necklace and matching earrings, smiled and nodded at him. She was pretty, and Blake couldn’t help smiling back at her.
“Mother Superior will be arriving shortly, Abbot.”
Abbot?
“Ah, thank you,” Victor responded. “The young man and I will be in my office.” Blake couldn’t tell if Victor wanted to hear that news or not.
“Very well.”
They walked around the desk to a door with a red-ringed control disk. When Victor waved his hand in front of it, the red ring turned green and the door slid open. Victor led Blake through the door into a long, white hallway with a number of doors dotting its length on both sides. At the other end, beyond a set of open doors, Blake recognized the antiquated metal gates of an elevator.
That must be the old elevator that goes down to the control room Quinn and I discovered…
As with the first security door, Victor unlocked his office door with his hand and they stepped inside. It was a modern, minimalist, and windowless office.
Blake gave the spacious, rectangular room a quick glance and chuckled. “Of course,” he muttered, smirking.
“Something amusing?” Victor asked, gesturing to one of the couches. He chose to sit in a black leather armchair.
“Oh, sorry. It’s just…everything in here is black and white. Your suit…I’ve never seen you in anything other than black and white.”
“Ah, yes, it’s a choice; a stark reminder of the organization’s principles. There is evil and there is good; black and white. There is no room for gray. It also makes getting dressed in the morning easier because it removes a set of unnecessary decisions from my life.”
“Uh-huh, and who’s Abbot?”
It was Victor’s turn to chuckle. “We’re less of an agency or organization than an order, so to speak. Abbot is my title. Think of it like military rank such as commander or captain. I would be the captain if this were Star Trek.”
“Okay, but isn’t abbot like, a religious thing?”
“Well, yes, and you’ll hear similar terms used to describe our organizational hierarchy. I am the abbot of this facility, which means I’m the one tasked with its operation and maintenance.”
“Does this order have a Vatican?” Blake asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Yes, it does actually, but we refer to it as the Citadel. As the bond of trust grows between us, my superiors may allow you to visit the Citadel. Its location is highly classified. Even I’m not quite sure where it is.”
“Uh-huh. So, you’re a global para-military organization disguised as a religious order? What about the woman at the desk, does she have a religious title?”
“You mean Valentina? She’s the receptionist, Blake.”
Blake shook his head. “I’m confused.”
“I’m just teasing. She is the Librarian for this facility. She may look like an ordinary receptionist to you, but she handles vast amounts of research data for The Order. I believe she’s up for promotion, however.”
“Why all of this weird, archaic stuff for an underground energy thing?”
“Would anyone believe you if you told them you worked for a para-military religious order of mysterious monks and nuns concerned with global security?”
Blake laughed. “Of course not.”
Victor smiled. “Now you know why we’re structured the way we are.”
Well, that makes a lot of sense, actually…
“Okay, so this Mother Superior person is not a nun, then?”
“Most definitely not,” Victor answered, shaking his head. “Her real title is the Hegumenia. She is the regional leader of The Order for the Northeast. We simply call her Mother Superior. I’m not really sure why, to be honest.”
“All right, so I’m here. I came. Explain to me what all of this does and how I fit in.”
“Very well. You’re currently on the Control Sub Level, or Sub Level 1. Beneath us is the Reactor Sub Level, or Sub Level 2. I believe you already know what’s down there.”
“Yeah, I do,” he responded.
“This is the prime facility which means it was the first of its kind, built after the death of Wilhelm Reich and the transformation of his home to a museum. The house above us is called Orgonon, and the name stuck. The facility adopted that name to honor him, but it was not built with his knowledge. I’ve told you this part, so I’ll skip to what we do. This facility uses the original technology enhanced with slight modifications to harness orgone energy from the atmosphere and organic matter, such as trees, animals, even humans. We can collect the energy, convert it to a tangible form, and store it. We can even focus the stored energy and saturate objects with it.”
“That’s what you do in the reactor…you saturate objects with orgone energy?”
“Well, as I told you and Quinn, we used to. Today we’re more focused on translating that energy back into the environment in a controlled manner using the above ground equipment such as the CloudBusters you found.”
A k
nock at the door distracted them. “Ah,” Victor said. “That will be Mother Superior now.” He stood and went to the door, ready to greet her.
Blake sighed, his brow furled. This gets weirder by the minute.
2-11 | Superior Complex
Quinn
QUINN PEDALED UP SOUTH STREET to the police station where Chief Applegate was supposed to make an announcement in conjunction with the five o’clock news. Track had run over that afternoon and he hoped he hadn’t missed anything. A large crowd had gathered and overrun the parking area while various news crews and their vans inconveniently parked along Junkins Avenue and the lot across the street near Leary Field. Chief Applegate, several Portsmouth officers, two state troopers, and a number of people in business suits walked out of police headquarters and made their way to the press stand. Good, I’m just in time.
He noticed a number of black SUVs that looked like movie-style unmarked cars of the FBI or CIA. Quinn pedaled into the police station’s driveway and cycled around until he found a spot that allowed him a decent view of the podium. Among the gathered reporters, he spotted Camilla Brenhurst, the reporter covering the Blue Spekter story. I wonder if she would be an ally or if she would cut and run with whatever story she could get from me?
Chief Applegate tapped one of the microphones and the small speaker system they had set up produced a thump-thump sound. Satisfied it was working, she addressed the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this afternoon. Today, I’m here to update you on the vigilante or unidentified phenomenon situation that has arisen in Portsmouth and if I can, answer questions you may have. Joining me on the stand today is representation from the Portsmouth Police Department, the State Police from the Epping Troop A Barracks, and agents from the United States Department of Homeland Security, or DHS for brevity, with representation from the National Protection and Programs Directorate and the Office of Intelligence and Analysis.”
Good lord, did they need to bring in all these reinforcements? I’m surprised the military isn’t here yet. It’s not going to be easy to be a superhero around here anymore. I need to sit with Mr. St. Germain and get my powers worked out soon.
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