Rise of the White Lotus

by H L Stephens

  The Rest of the Crew

  My body healed slowly, but as it did, Jameson insisted that physical therapy was a requirement to ensure proper healing. We didn't push the bones that were knitting, but we worked on breathing exercises to ensure pneumonia didn't set in. I never thought breathing could hurt so much, but it can, and it did. Each day brought a new, inventive agony, but Jameson assured me it was all part of the healing process. It reached a point where I almost dreaded his visits. My body did mend, however, and as I became more mobile, I was eventually able to meet the rest of the crew.

  The warehouse was a home of sorts for a group of semi-retired, not-so-old folks who had the oddest bunch of hobbies I had ever heard of. At least they referred to them as hobbies when we first met. I discovered as we got to know each other a little better that these 'hobbies' were more like highly developed skills that had been cultivated over decades of utilization. Now that the crew was in the autumn of their years, those skills were just not being employed to the same degree as they were when the group was younger; hence the semi-retirement.

  I had already met Oz, who was the muscle of the crew. Jameson was the bone man. Dorthia, well her skills were not so apparent at first. She just seemed to have a lot of charm and was a mean cook in the kitchen. I relegated her to the level of conman and left it at that.

  My next introduction was to Marcus. He was the tech whiz. From what Dorthia told me, Marcus could build, fix, hack, decrypt, or otherwise unravel anything electronic. If it had wires or an electronic signature, Marcus was its master.

  Coming in at the lower end of seventy, Marcus was a small, slender fellow with a perpetually grizzled face. Every whisker was as white as snow but never grew beyond a gnarled sort of stubble. It made me wonder whether he set his shaver to that length on purpose or if his facial hair follicles just gave up the ghost years ago and stopped growing altogether. The hair on his head was just as interesting. It too was as pure white as alpine snow. The oddity was that at five or so inches long, it stood straight out from his head without the assistance of any noticeable hair products. It was as though it had been scared stiff. He didn't have much hair to speak of. There was more scalp than mane, so Marcus had an overall straggly appearance at best.

  Marcus was farsighted in his old age, forcing him to wear glasses; a fact that he continually cursed. I never saw him with fewer than three pairs upon his person. He generally had one pair sitting atop his head, one pair at the end of his nose, and a third pair dangling from around his neck. Sometimes he would carry a spare in his shirt pocket.

  He reminded me of the stories of Teddy Roosevelt during the Spanish American War. They say he carried no fewer than twelve pairs of glasses with him to ensure he could see during the campaign, and that was pretty much Marcus to a T.

  I asked Marcus one day why he needed so many pairs on him all the time.

  "Well, Jane, this pair," he said pointing at the ones on the end of his nose, "is for reading, and this pair," pointing to the ones on his head, "is for close up work when I need to read the small lettering on my circuit boards. This pair," he said, holding up the odd looking pair around his neck, "is for seeing things people don't want me to see."

  "You mean like x-ray glasses or something?" I asked.

  I thought he was "yanking my chain" as my dad used to say.

  "Something like that," Marcus said with a wink.

  At around fifty or so, the final member of the crew was also its youngest member. I thought he was much younger, but Dorthia assured me it was not the case.

  My first introduction to Avery was a bit awkward, to say the least. I had just forced my body out of bed for my mandatory morning stroll around the warehouse as part of my ongoing physical therapy. I rounded a corner and came face to open-muzzle with a 3.5 inch diameter rocket launcher held by a man that was barely four feet tall. It was like looking into the stinking maw of hell, held by an impish little demon that didn't seem to think there was a problem with waving such a metallic monstrosity around.

  Avery's response when I screamed in the face of his imposing weapon of war was, "Watch where you're standing kid."

  I skirted out of his line of sight and shifted my attention from walking the floor to looking for Dorthia to find out who this stranger was.

  Turned out Avery was the weapons expert of the group, or as Dorthia put it, "Avery has a perverse fascination for anything that goes bang."

  Though Avery's stature was small, he was built like a brick wall. He was as muscled as Oz but more compact. In fact, Avery looked like a smaller version of Wolverine from the X-men movies and had the disposition to boot. The only difference was that Avery didn't have the gelled, funky hair, and he didn't smoke cigars.

  Dorthia called him a gun junkie and an artillery whore. The ways in which Dorthia described Avery were so colorful in fact, it made me wonder if she even liked him. My curiosity was piqued from the first moment I saw them together. I watched Dorthia's and Avery's interactions like Jane Goodall observing wild mountain gorillas in the Congo. I detected something beneath the surface between them which was more powerful than hatred and more deadly than one of Avery's grenades.

  I discovered that unanswered love has a funny way of breeding tension between two people, and such passionate emotional conflict can hardly be rivaled even when compared to the hostility found between enemies. Such was the tension between these two frenemies.

  Avery had a shock of wavy henna brown hair and intense brown eyes that always seemed to carry a spark of something akin to anger in them. My dad described those sorts of people as being as tight as an E string on a banjo, and that was pretty much the impression I got from Avery when we first met. He was always on edge.

  Tragedy has a way of sucking the joy from people's lives, and Avery seemed as joyless as they came. He wasn't a lighthearted sort of person, and I rarely saw him smile, though I soon discovered I had a knack for making him laugh against his will. He didn't like being taken unawares like that, but he kept coming back for more. He said I was silly and unbalanced. When I told Dorthia that, she smiled.

  "Avery needs a bit of silliness in his life," she replied. "Trust me Jane, when Avery loses his patience with you, you will know it."

  "How is that?" I asked.

  A great sadness entered Dorthia's eyes as she replied, "He will simply stop talking to you."

  I never saw Avery that he wasn't testing, cleaning, or examining some sort of weapon. Even with his incessant manipulation of dangerous hardware, something told me he was relatively harmless, at least where I was concerned. Avery was the first one to show me how to find the balance of a blade and how to throw it. He also taught me how to break down an M40 sniper rifle and put it back together again in under five minutes. He said I was a natural with weapons. In fact, I began to pick up many skills from the crew as I recovered from my attack.

  I worked with Oz on building back my strength. We started slowly at first because so much damage had been done by the Bratva goons. As bone and tissue began to knit, however, the daily workouts and physical drills became more challenging; grueling even. It started reminding me of my Physical Education teacher, Coach Reese, back in Parsonville with her Buster Brown haircut and her love of striped, knee high socks.

  Coach Reese loved to find the fattest, most out of shape kid in every class to pick on. When she wasn't insulting their body shape and imagined eating habits, she was forcing them to run the perimeter of the school's fence on the hottest days just to act as a lesson to the rest of us on how important physical fitness was. A boy named Tommy Richardson was her favorite victim in my class.

  The poor kid had a glandular problem and was on medication that caused him to retain weight. He ate like a bird, sweat like a pig, and had no tolerance for heat whatsoever. He was the perfect target for a mean-spirited, child-hating, fitness junkie like Coach Reese and the perfect audio-visual for what happened to children who were out of shape. It was worse than Chinese water torture for those of us who called
Tommy our friend; being forced to watch Tommy run the fence day after day. How I wished I had the lightning of Thor to strike that horrid woman from the Earth. The day poor Tommy collapsed during one of his death runs was the most humane thing that could have happened to him. He was ripped out of that woman's class and saved from her clutches. I was never so happy for such a calamity in all my life.

  Once Tommy was released from the hospital for treatment of heat exhaustion, the full measure of Mrs. Richardson's wrath came down upon Coach Reese. The storm that broke forth from Tommy's mother over the head of that sadistic woman brought Coach Reese to shivering, gut wrenching tears.

  For days, Coach Reese could be heard whimpering in her office. The mewling sounds that drifted through the door of her office were the only signs we students had that she had survived the encounter with Mrs. Richardson. Coach Reese just stopped coming to class. We students entertained ourselves the best we could during that time, but within a week, Coach Reese was gone.

  Unlike Tommy Richardson, I had no such hope of rescue from my grueling daily exercises. Truth be told, Oz wasn't as bad as Coach Reese, but he did push me in what felt like a merciless manner. When I whined about how much it hurt, he told me to suck it up and work through the pain. When I said I was too tired, he made me run laps anyways to get my blood pumping.

  "I don't accept excuses, Jane," Oz barked at me one day when I complained he was working me too hard. "We are going to get that body of yours back in working order, whether you like it or not."

  Oz wasn't playing around. When I complained to Jameson, expecting to receive some level of sympathy and support, I came up empty handed.

  "Don't look at me," Jameson said. "I told Oz to push you. It is the only way you are going to recover from what happened. It is not a fun process, so get used to it kiddo. It is going to be a bumpy ride."

  The smile on Jameson's face when he said it somehow didn't make me feel any better.

  When my body was strong enough and all of my injuries healed, Oz began training me in a different way.

  "Where did you learn to fight?" Oz asked after we had completed what had become our normal morning routine of strength and endurance training.

  "I have no idea what you are talking about," I said as I stretched out my muscles. "I am not a fighter."

  "The knife wounds on those Bratva would suggest otherwise," Oz replied.

  "What would you know about that?" I asked, playing coy.

  Oz cleared the distance between us in a few short strides and grabbed my wrist.

  "You know perfectly well what I know about it," he said. Oz placed something cold and hard in the palm of my hand and released his grip upon me. When I looked to see what he had given me, I was surprised to see my father's boot knife.

  "Where did you get this?" I demanded.

  "Right where you left it, Jane," he said. "Remember, I found you in that alley where they left you to die. Don't think for one moment I didn't go back and scour that area for evidence. The first thing I noticed when I went back there was the amount of blood at the scene. It couldn't all be yours or else you would be dead, which meant it had to belong to some or all of the men who attacked you. The best way to bleed someone like that in a fight is to cut them. You didn't have a blade on you when I found you, so I looked for one in the alley. That is when I found your boot knife." Oz smiled. "When I acquainted myself with your friends, I saw your handiwork. It was impressive. That's why I asked where you learned to fight. If you had had any training, you could have gotten away from that encounter without so much as a scratch on you. You have the natural ability, Jane. You just lack the knowledge and the discipline. Now, tell me everything about the fight in the alley as you remember it. Start with the moment when you first realized you were in trouble."

  I walked Oz through every grueling detail. Not just about the events but the sights and sounds. How the pavement felt beneath me as I crouched down to liberate the knife from my boot. How the two Bratva smelled when I slammed into them. In this manner, I relived every moment of the attack.

  When I finished, Oz praised my efforts.

  "Your surroundings are just as important as the people in them, Jane," he said. "In fact, there may be times when your surrounding are the single most important component in your survival. Take for example what happened after you initiated your attack. You almost got away except for one tiny detail that you overlooked; an innocuous pile of trash that tangled your feet. If you had had the training at the time, you would have realized you still had options to defend yourself after losing the boot knife. A mere foot and a half from where you lay was a lead pipe. Six inches from it was a brick. You had other weapons at your disposal, but you didn't know they were there. The loss of what you thought was your only weapon allowed fear to set in and your enemy got the upper hand. The worst thing you can ever do in a fight is panic. You must keep your head and take stock of everything around you. Look for openings. Look for your enemy's weaknesses. They will always be present, Jane. All you have to do is exploit them."

  I wanted to learn what Oz had to teach me, but the subject of the Bratva 5 as I called them and what they had done to me was still too fresh. It felt like Oz was telling me I had failed somehow in what had happened; like somehow it was my fault I didn't get away.

  "Well, you got your ass kicked while you were trying to kick theirs, and you have what, a good one hundred and fifty pounds on me?" I said in defense of myself. "I did the best I could in the situation."

  I wiped my face with a towel, doing my best to hide the tears that stung my eyes and began to fall in greater abundance than I liked. I felt the weight of Oz's massive hand on my shoulder. It was gentle and so was the voice that accompanied it.

  "You did better than most grown men would have done under the circumstances, Jane," he said. "I just want to make sure that next time, they are the ones that are left dying in the alleyway; not you. Now, as for me getting my ass kicked, let's talk about that for a minute, shall we?"

  I looked up and saw Oz smile. It made me laugh. The tension and hurt drained out of me immediately. He maneuvered me over to a bench and handed me a bottle of water.

  "Sometimes Jane," he continued, "you have to let your enemy think they are winning in order to get what you want from them. In my case with the Bratva, I wanted information from them as to why they came after you. I let them get in a few good licks to loosen their tongues. It made them feel bold, and bold men tend to brag. Turns out, they were hired to find you and take you out. They didn't know why, and they didn't care. You wouldn't happen to know anything about why a group of the Russian Bratva would be unleashed against you, would you Jane?"

  The temptation swelled up within me to tell Oz everything about my history - from the murder of my parents to the reason for my being in New York. I was beginning to develop a sense of trust for the man, even if he did bust my rear end every day of the week except Sunday. But something held me back. I just couldn't bring myself to reveal it all. I needed more time to determine if Oz and the others were worthy of such a revelation because once I went down that road with them, there would be no going back.

  "Nope," I replied.

  The lie was a bitter pill to swallow, and Oz's expression indicated that he didn't believe me. He nodded however as if he at least accepted what I said for now.

  "Then let's get to it," he said. "You have already had one group of Bratva stomping around showing their ass. You can bet your boots other members are going to be out there looking for you. We need to get you ready for whatever the Brotherhood might bring against you. We'll start with the fifty vital strike points."

  A look of cool resolve settled upon Oz's features, and as it did so, I felt a pit form in my belly. Though my day was just beginning, I felt within my bones it would be a long and arduous one if Oz had anything to do with it.

  Transformations

  When I wasn't sweating to the oldies with Oz, I was learning anatomy and first aid with Jameson, having the electronic wo
rld demystified for me by Marcus, and discovering the magic of incendiaries with Avery. It was a rigorous training routine that kept my mind and body so focused, I lost all track of how much time was passing by. At the end of each day, I had no energy to focus beyond my body's need for recuperation. My body was changing, strengthening, and my skills expanding, but with each new level of advancement came more for me to learn.

  I thought I was covering every area of expertise the crew had to offer in terms of knowledge, until one day Dorthia interrupted one of Avery's instructional sessions on the proper care and maintenance of an AKS-74 under desert conditions.

  "I think you all have had Jane long enough Avery," Dorthia said as Avery was in the middle of explaining the dangers of getting sand in the chamber of the gun. "It is high time I began teaching her my specialties."

  Avery pulled Dorthia to the side and demanded, "Do the others know you intend to train her?"

  "We have talked about it, yes," she said pulling her wrist from Avery's vice-like grip.

  "That's not what I mean," he said looking in my direction. He lowered his voice and growled, "Do they know you are going to teach her your specialty? She is just a child Dorthia. It's one thing for her to learn how to protect herself or how to hack into a system, but your skills are another story. Not everyone has the stomach for your methods."

  Dorthia stared at Avery as if he had kicked her in the gut.

  "Well, at least I know how you feel," she said.

  "That's not what I meant, and you know it," he said reaching for her hand once more but not to restrain her as he had before. This time his touch was different; more tender. Dorthia jerked her hand back anyways. A look of pain brushed her features.

  "I am not going to turn her into a monster, Avery, if that is what you're worried about," she said, "but I will teach her how to disappear. If she is being hunted, she will need such a skill; more so than knowing how to keep a gun clean in a desert environment. The last time I checked, the streets of New York weren't covered in desert sand. Your lesson today wouldn't help her if the Bratva got their hands on her. Stew on that reality for a bit."