by Peter Darley
Belinda replied, “Alex and I have been going through reams of engineering reports for quotes in a new ad campaign for the Air Shark Four. Charlton’s launching it next year. He wants to really push the improvements to the corporate community.”
“Wow. That sounds pretty complicated.”
“It is, but Alex has been an invaluable help. He really knows about this stuff. I have to admit, it feels great to have a job where I have some responsible input. When I was a secretary, I felt like a spare part.”
“So, why do you seem so glum?”
They continued along the street and Belinda’s brow furrowed. “I’ve . . . not been able to concentrate much. Something’s bugging me, but I don’t know what it is.”
“That’s odd.”
“I just can’t shake a feeling I’ve been having the last the few days.”
“What feeling?”
Belinda stopped in mid-stride and turned to her. “I keep feeling like . . . something terrible is about to happen.”
Seventeen
Origin
1:14 a.m.
Under the cloak of darkness, Drake walked around the back of a once-well-kept, three-story house, just outside Rock Hill, North Carolina. Rage began to consume him again as he looked upon the property for the first time in over a decade. There were so many memories, none of them heart-warming.
Fixed to the wall beside the back door was a key safe. Is the code still the same? He punched in the digits that were permanently fixed into his mind—numbers he’d spent his childhood in fear of punching in. He’d been dependent on the house for his survival, but inside had been nothing but terror and pain.
The key safe came open and he smiled. You fuckin’ asshole, Joe. You couldn’t even be bothered to change the code after all these years.
He opened the back door and stepped inside. Through the moonlight, he could see the place was neglected. The furniture and fittings were the same, but the place looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in months. Formerly, it had been impeccable. His foster father, Joe Cassidy, had been a successful property developer. Drake immediately deduced the revelations that had come out about the man at the trial of nineteen-year-old Brandon Drake had destroyed him. He knew Cassidy had been legally barred from fostering children for life. Clearly, the bad publicity had seriously affected his property business in the process.
With slow, vengeful steps, he entered the house through the kitchen. He entered the dining room and noticed that the antique, oak dining table remained. It was scattered with litter, and a coating of dust was illuminated by an almost-exhausted candle flame. A smell of musk and dirt permeated the air, with a slight garnish of whisky. Oh, you really fucked up, didn’t you, Joe?
He looked up at a replica Samurai sword hanging from a hook on the wall, and chuckled. Joe had always seen himself as some kind of warrior ‘hard man’, but only with little kids.
He continued into the hallway and heard footsteps coming from the landing at the top of the stairs.
“Is somebody there?” a female voice said.
He braced himself behind the stairwell in the shadows. Stay out of it, Gretchen. I don’t want you involved in this.
More memories came back to him, giving him a moment of pause. Gretchen Cassidy had tried to protect him from Joe, but she was always rewarded with a punch in the mouth. Resentment toward her festered in his heart. She was weak, and she’d still stayed with the son of a bitch. She was a born victim.
He caught a glimpse of her as she reached the bottom of the stairwell. She seemed so much older than the ten years since he last saw her should have allowed. However, he couldn’t let her see him.
With dazzling speed, he emerged from the shadows and punched her—a precision strike to the base of her skull. She fell to the floor, unconscious. I’m sorry, Mom.
Joe would be appearing any minute if he was even remotely sober. Drake returned to the living room and took a seat at the head of the table.
Within moments, he heard a groaning voice coming from the landing. “What’s goin’ on down there?”
Drake waited as the sound of footsteps came down the stairwell.
His first view of Joe Cassidy through the candlelight was that of an unkempt man in his late fifties. Cassidy’s dirty white vest, blue and white-striped pajama bottoms, and apparent obesity, gave him the appearance of a man who’d given up. You really are a pathetic asshole, Joe.
Drake watched in silence as the man crouched down over his unconscious wife.
“Gretchen!” Cassidy said. “Gretchen, wake up.”
“Hi, Dad.”
Cassidy froze as though he couldn’t believe his own hearing. He slowly turned and looked up. “N-no. It can’t be.”
“What’s wrong, Dad? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
“B-but . . . you’re dead.”
“Clearly exaggerated.”
Cassidy stood, while Drake walked over to the liquor cabinet and helped himself to a bottle of brandy and a glass.
“What are you doing here?” Cassidy said. “And what did you do to Gretchen?”
Drake poured himself a generous glassful and sat down again. “A carefully-controlled blow to the base of the skull. It jars the brain. She’ll be out for awhile, but she’s all right. I wanted to talk to you privately.”
“What do you want?”
“Answers.”
“What answers?”
Drake took a mouthful of brandy. “You said you thought I was dead. I want you to explain that to me.”
“Why do you need me to explain it? It was all over the news.”
“Yeah, well, it ain’t quite that simple. I’ve been out of it for awhile, and I wanna know what the fuck is going on.”
Cassidy sat in the chair at the opposite side of the table. They faced one another through the eeriness of the candlelight, the aura of hostility ever present.
“According to the news, you died in a crash in Los Angeles,” Cassidy said.
Drake frowned, bemused. “Los Angeles?”
“Yeah. Some kind of test aircraft. It happened, apparently, after you and your brother broke your sister out from some slavery ring. The army and some intel agency were involved, too.”
Drake’s mind became numb with what Cassidy had just told him. It was too much. “Brother and sister?”
“What’s wrong with you? Some kind of amnesia? Yeah, your natural brother hooked up with you after you broke out of Leavenworth.”
“Leavenworth?”
Cassidy looked at him pensively for a moment. “You really don’t know, do you?”
“No, I don’t, and that’s why I’m here.”
“You were all over the news for a couple of years. Before that, the last I heard, you were injured in Afghanistan. Can’t say I was sorry to hear it.”
Drake laughed angrily. “Keep talking, asshole. What happened to me after Afghanistan?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Drake stood and walked over to the Samurai sword on the wall, removed it from the hook, and drew it from its sheath.
“Put that down, boy!” Cassidy said with a growl.
“Are you being serious? You really think you can tell me what to do?”
“I can still give you a whooping, kid.”
“How fuckin’ deluded can a man be?” Drake spun around and held the point of the blade to Cassidy’s neck. “You remember how you used to stick me and cut the soles of my feet with this thing? It was agony for me to walk for days afterward.”
Even through his sudden fear, it seemed Cassidy wasn’t going to repent. “Apparently, I didn’t do it often enough. It’s obviously what you could have done with a lot more of.”
Drake shook his head in disbelief. “You are so fuckin’ stupid. I am what I am because of you. Hatred and rage drive me. After you, it was the army. Always authority. Always someone trying to control my life. I hate the fucking world, Joe. I know what I am, and you are responsible. You created me.”
&
nbsp; Cassidy was quiet, his gaze on the sword at all times.
“Now talk, ass-wipe. What happened to me after Afghanistan?”
“I . . . I only know what happened from the papers and the TV. They sent you to work at some weapons development facility in Washington. Mach Industries. After that, you went crazy and tried your hand at becoming some kind of superhero. They even turned you into a comic book.” Cassidy laughed. “You, a comic hero. That’s got to be the joke of the century.”
“What comic hero?”
Cassidy looked up at him with tears of laughter running down his cheeks. “The Interceptor.”
Interceptor. Interceptor. Interceptor. The word rang out in Drake’s head causing him to stagger backward. No, it can’t be. It can’t be . . . me. But deep down, he knew that it was. He suddenly realized he’d always known.
He stepped forward again. “You’d better tell me what you know, or I swear, Cassidy, I’m gonna fucking kill you. What did I do? What were these superhero things I’m supposed to have done?”
“Carringby Industries in Denver. You saved the Reese woman. It was all about her. You went across the country with her. You were on TV together. I saw it.”
“Who?”
“Belinda Reese.”
A faint hint of the pain in his head struck him as he heard her name. Belinda Reese. Belinda Reese. Belinda Reese. He was now certain this was the woman who’d been tormenting him. She was his Achilles Heel. He could finally see the connection between The Interceptor and ‘the woman’. He just couldn’t process it all.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Drake shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“You’re pathetic, you know that? You always were a sniveling, snot-nosed little shit. You cost me everything. My business. My position in the community. I hate you, Brandon.”
Satisfied he’d just received more information than he’d expected, Drake raised the sword. “Then consider this your retirement, Joe.”
Cassidy’s eyes widened in terror.
“Go to hell, motherfucker. I’ll see you later.” He slashed the sword across in a horizontal movement, decapitating Joe Cassidy in one clean stroke. The head fell onto the floor and rolled.
Drake watched for a few seconds as Joe’s heart pumped the last of his blood through the remnants of his lower neck. Finally, the headless body slumped off the chair.
Drake looked on, almost mesmerized as blood dripped from the sword. He tilted it one way and the other in the realization that it was the tool of his own creation. The brutal cruelty of it was what made him who he was. In a decision to embrace his former fear, he chose to make it his own.
Kneeling down, he grasped Cassidy’s vest and wiped the sword clean. After sheathing it, he hooked it across his back with the strap.
Looking around the room, his mind reeled with the information Cassidy had revealed. He needed to know more—something that would provide him with further answers.
He switched on the lights and hurried around the living room, but there was nothing he could use.
He ran up the stairs and scanned each room in turn. When he came to Gretchen and Joe’s bedroom, he moved around the bed and found a laptop computer, complete with a power pack.
Drake took the laptop and power leads and ran back down the stairs, quickly becoming fingerprint conscious. What have I touched? The sword was on his back. He’d used the door key, which was in his pocket. The glass and brandy bottle.
He reached the dining room, picked up the bottle and glass, and put them in the side pockets of his hooded jacket.
After hurrying out through the kitchen, he slipped his hand under the sleeve of his hoodie and wiped the outside door handle, then the key code buttons.
The Chevy was parked behind the trees on the other side of the garden. With the sword on his back, he pulled the hood over his head and made his way across the clearing.
Now, he could assimilate his thoughts. He’d somehow found his brother. I can’t believe I found Tyler. And . . . I have a sister?
But something had been done to him to give him a different persona. Under the spell of this other identity, he’d become this Interceptor, and saved some woman named Belinda Reese. From his experiences in his visions and dreams, The Interceptor had always drawn reference to a woman. She was the one who kept bringing him down. She had to be the cause of the pain that debilitated him. But who was she? To him, she was merely a pain in his head. He couldn’t associate her with a living person. Where was she? What was she to him that could induce such excruciating pain?
The government had taken four years of his life from him, brainwashed him, kept him prisoner in the Mojave Desert complex, used him for their own ends, and then tried to kill him. He had to have his revenge. But how would he accomplish such a mission if the pain in his head kept bringing him down?
With the laptop, he could now search and find out everything about what he’d been doing during his lost four years. He had to locate the one who was weakening him. It was the only way he was going to survive.
He knew he had to kill Belinda Reese.
Eighteen
The Stranger in the Mirror
Drake drove aimlessly through the night, his mind awash with what he’d learned. He had no choice but to get out of North Carolina. Gretchen would have revived before long to discover her decapitated husband, and would’ve contacted the authorities. Drake had no desire to kill her. She’d tried to be kind to him when he was a boy, but she never had the guts to stand up to Joe. Maybe now she’d have the opportunity to live her own life—all by virtue of a blow to the back of her head. It surprised him that he still retained a degree of regard for Gretchen Cassidy.
At noon the following day, he pulled up at a motel in Danville, Virginia, close to the border with North Carolina. It was a random stop, but it was far away from where he’d killed his foster father, and he needed sleep.
He awoke at 9:00 p.m., went out to an adjacent truck stop for a burger, and then returned to his motel room. A burning question plagued him: Who was I?
He connected Cassidy’s laptop to one of the room’s plugs and opened up an internet search for ‘Brandon Drake’.
Images of him appeared in the sidebar on the screen. The first was a close-up shot of him being led across the courtyard at Fort Bragg. Enlarging it, he saw it was him. But it wasn’t him. He had no memory of what he was looking at. The face on the screen was so much gentler than his. It seemed to be imbued with compassion and much vulnerability. He was so unlike him. It was like looking in a mirror, but seeing a total stranger. Is this you, Interceptor? He studied the image of his doppelganger for long moments before noticing the article beneath entitled: ‘Death of a Hero.’
He read the story of how he’d rescuing Belinda Reese from Treadwell’s operatives at Carringby Tower, and their escape from the police in a flying car . . .
“What the hell?”
The article continued with an account of his escape from a Wyoming police cell and a chase with the army.
Something about that was familiar. Wyoming. The woods. An image of him kicking the crap out of some guy in a suit flashed before his eyes. It was as though he was remembering something he’d actually experienced, unlike the sounds of the voices in his head.
Then it dawned on him. The guy he’d kicked the crap out of in Wyoming—was Wilmot. He could see his face as clearly as he was seeing the computer screen. The son of a bitch was there. It was him. He was a part of all this from the beginning.
He kept reading and came to a story about an attack at Channel 7 studios. That felt familiar too. It was something about a gang, running through the streets with a woman, and a derelict building.
Then he came to the story of his arrest and trial at Fort Bragg, and his escape from Fort Leavenworth. It concluded with the account of his involvement in a rescue attempt in Los Angeles—a human trafficking organization set up by fragmented members of one of the Tongs.
He looked away from the scre
en trying desperately to allow the memories to come back to him. The feeling that he was close to recalling the events was overwhelming.
And then he read the details. The rescue had occurred in an abandoned fish factory situated on Los Angeles Harbor. There had been a conflict between him, the army, and SDT. That was when he’d supposedly died. He’d been in an experimental aircraft. The flying car. It had crashed into a jeep at the site of the conflict.
Fish factory. Tong. Those two points seemed so familiar to him. He tried to focus on them to see if anything came back to him.
He sensed a pain in his shoulder as though it was being squeezed, but it was more than that. It was an intense, penetrating, burning pain. It wasn’t like the flashbacks he’d had through the Interceptor’s memories. As with his memory of Wilmot in the Wyoming woods, he was actually remembering it as a personal experience.
He saw a flash of something. There was darkness, and then he was firing a machine gun, blowing a Chinese man’s head to pieces. Then he was driving the nozzle of a machine pistol into the shattered knee of another Chinese guy.
One flash led to another. There was a huge Chinese man gripping him, pinning him against a wall. He could feel the hatred he’d felt toward this man, but he couldn’t put it together in any context. Had he broken the giant’s neck? He couldn’t be sure. There was someone else there too. Through a blurry haze, he was sure he could remember a young man. Could that have been my brother?
He returned to the search page and came to an older post dated April 26th, 2014 from the website of The Wall Street Journal: ‘The Trial of Brandon Drake.’ It began with another account of that which had been covered in the other article, but delved more deeply into the details of his trial. There was a mention of him taking on a team of MPs in the courtroom. That also triggered something. Once again, he could remember with his own mind. The courtroom flashed before his eyes. There was the woman through a haze, although he couldn’t make out her face. All he could see were the MPs. He was leaping across the tables, kicking and punching them into oblivion—and he loved every minute of it.