Free Stories 2016

by Baen Books

  "So Mr. Wood comes back and says that in his opinion someone did a lot of erasing. He couldn't recover much but he found enough to tell him that there were a lot more notes on the drive during the last four months than we found." He looked up. "Er, I need to go to the bathroom now."

  The old man helped him get up; it hurt a lot, but Xavier didn't feel that sensation of something ripping, or about to rip. The door on the lefthand side of the room opened into a large and elaborate bathroom—what Xavier guessed were literally marble floors, hand-cut stone counters, décor he'd only seen on television. This guy…he's either rich, or he's got a serious bathroom obsession.

  A few minutes later he came out under his own power and sat back down on the bed. He decided not to lie down yet, even though his gut ached, and so did his chest now. "I asked Mr. Wood to see what he could find out about Mike's last few months, and he found out a lot of interesting things. Like there were a lot of big gaps in his location—he was mostly around Los Angeles, yeah, but Wood had a hard time tracing exactly where and what he was doing. In his opinion, that meant that either Mike was being real covert, or someone was covering their tracks, or both."

  "Getting a professional to do that for you must have cost something."

  "Cost a lot, actually, yeah. And at that point Mr. Wood said I needed to go hire a professional investigator, because it was getting too much like a criminal case for him." He took a deep breath, ignoring the pain. "And then I found the pictures. He had one of those miniature digital cameras, a Lumiere SilentShot 2100, and that wasn't on him when he was found—but I was trying to . . . " he suddenly found himself unable to speak, and his eyes stung again.

  Breathe. The pain helped this time. "I was trying to salvage his coat, you know, it was something I might be able to keep, and when I was trying to work the stains out I felt something hard. It was a memory card for the camera. He'd shoved it into a hidden pocket I hadn't seen and I guess whoever killed him hadn't seen it either. The card was mostly empty…but it had three pictures on it. Pictures of a girl I'd never seen before, still don't know who she is, but I can recognize buildings and things around her—and the timestamps are from the day he was killed."

  "You brought this evidence to the police?"

  "Yeah," He grimaced. "Lieutenant Reisman agreed with me that it looked funny, but the L.A. police felt they'd closed the case and no one wanted to reopen it." He shook his head, and he couldn't keep the fury out of his voice this time. "They were going to let that monster who killed my brother walk, they didn't even care that she was still out there, that she'd laughed right in my ear when she killed him! Didn't care that my mom was like a total wreck and my sis wasn't much better, that I couldn't…couldn't even . . . " he stopped, tears of rage once more on his face. "So if they weren't going to do anything, I was going to."

  "I see." The old man looked at him for a while, then stood, offering his hand. "Let's walk a bit before you lie down again."

  Xavier found walking was painful, but he was curious about this guy's home. Through the main doorway there was a wide, carpeted hall, going in a gentle curve in both directions. They walked slowly, coming to another door every so often; sometimes his host would stop and open one of them, letting Xavier get a glimpse. The kitchen was brightly lit, white countertops and stainless steel and efficiency glittering on every sparkling edge, with multiple appliances spaced across the counters. There was a separate dining room, actually smaller than the kitchen; Xavier guessed that this guy didn't have many guests. Another door opened to show a library—a real library, which extended so far that there were actually three separate doors at widely spaced intervals leading to it. Those doors were all on the left; when he saw a door on the right, it was clearly an elevator.

  Something was bothering him about the setup, though. The old man seemed to notice, because he smiled. "What have you noticed?"

  What is it? he asked himself. Something about the rooms seemed…off, as though there was some essential feature missing. But what feature would you expect to see in all the different—

  "Windows. You don't have a single window anywhere here."

  "Very good, Xavier. You are observant."

  "You still haven't told me your name, either."

  "That, also, is true. I have been pondering that for quite some time."

  "Pondering? What's there to think about? What should I call you?"

  "A name can mean many things," he said. "My question to you is quite simple: when you are well, what do you intend to do?"

  "Finish my trip. Hopefully with fewer stabbings this time."

  "I see. If I understand you correctly, you have set out—yourself—to find your brother's killer and bring her to justice." The man was looking at him with a quizzical expression on his face, one eyebrow raised in amusement.

  The flippant phrasing stung. "Well, no one else will!"

  "Perhaps not. Still, allow me to put it this way: you have disappeared from your home to seek this revenge, leaving your mother and sister doubly bereaved, to hunt down a person—or, more likely, persons—whom your brother was still tracking, and about whom there was some secret that made your brother disbelieving, nervous, or even afraid. You are doing this on your own, with no help or backup, and if you are successful, you will be confronting someone who managed to kill your brother—who, you yourself imply, was a more formidable man than you are—with apparently little effort at all. Have I described the situation correctly?"

  Xavier found himself simultaneously infuriated at this old bastard's coldhearted summary and appalled at himself. What the hell have I been thinking? Mom's going to be going crazy! 'Shelle too!

  He sagged against the wall, the pain in gut and chest trying to take over. "Yeah. Yeah, you have, and I'm such a moron. I…I guess…I guess I'll have to go back."

  The old man nodded slowly. "But can you?"

  Xavier thought about going home, admitting what he'd done…staying home. And his gut twisted, this time for nothing having to do with being stabbed. "I guess I could. But…I can't stand the idea that she's going to walk. I can't! I hear that laugh every night! She thought it was funny!"

  Another nod. "So you would destroy yourself in the process if you were to return without having at least finished the effort."

  Boy, that makes me sound like some obsessive psycho. But—well, yeah, maybe I am. "Maybe I'd be okay. People get over stuff like this, don't they?"

  The man sighed, and suddenly he did look old—not just white haired, but ancient as though the whole world weighed down on him. "Some do, Xavier Ross. Others…others can only 'get over' it by finishing the job they begin. I said to you that I did not want my work wasted. Tell me as honestly as you can: if I bring you back to your home, will Xavier Uriel Ross find his way to healing?"

  Xavier wanted to say he would. He thought of his mother, and sister, and wanted to be back home with them so much it hurt. But he thought of just going back to school, of letting that past go, and that high, delicate laugh echoed through his head and he felt his teeth grind, his stomach boil, his chest and gut scream as he tensed. "I…I don't know. I don't know, sir, I really really don't."

  The old man looked at him for a long moment, then extended his hand, helped Xavier to stand fully upright again. "So it has to be, then. You have asked what you shall call me."

  He turned, and his back was once more straight, the white hair cascading down in perfect verticality. "You shall call me Sensei."

  "Er…what?"

  The man was leading him down the hallway. "You will not be yourself unless you see this through. Yet even you now realize that you have set yourself on a course that cannot help but end in death, the way you are now.

  "So the only choice is that you become the weapon you wish to be, Xavier Ross. You must become more deadly than your brother, faster, more capable than he was or ever could have been. You need to pass into secret places without being seen, learn truths hidden even from your police, and in the end you must be able to tra
ce through those truths to the ultimate confrontation that you seek—and survive that confrontation—before you can go home again."

  The two were in the elevator, going down, and Xavier felt a chill as he stared at the mysterious old man. He suddenly realized there was something much stranger going on than he had ever imagined. "You…you know who she is, don't you?"

  "I do not know. But your story gives me reason to suspect not who she is but what she is, who she serves and why, and how a young woman of such slight stature could so easily overpower and kill a man such as your brother."

  The elevator had two sets of doors, Xavier realized—one on the side by which they had entered, another opposite those, like some he'd seen in hospitals. The second set opened as the old man finished speaking.

  Xavier stared, openmouthed. It was clear that the hallway's curve encircled this entire area, a single cylindrical room that was over a hundred feet across and a hundred high. The center was dominated by a slender column that rose three-quarters of the way to the ceiling and ended in a wide, flat platform whose top he could not see. The column seemed covered by projections of metal and glass and wood.

  The rest of the room was filled with equipment—barbells and weightlifting machines, balance bars, vaulting horses, climbing projections on the walls, a complex wooden sparring dummy, sandbags, practice mats, racks of wooden swords, poles, other weapons, some of which Xavier didn't even recognize. There were real weapons, too, glittering with steel edges or unpadded, polished wood, a set of the plum flower or Mui Fa Jong poles, other equipment more exotic than anything he had ever seen. "Holy . . . "

  "I did not find you by accident, Xavier Ross," the old man said quietly. "The one who sent you down that alley knew precisely what he was doing. He intended you to be caught by that gang—not because he intended you to be killed, but because he knew that the confrontation would draw my attention, that I would intervene."

  Now Xavier transferred his stare to the old man. "You…you know who that guy was?"

  "Know, yes, and I also know he would do no such thing without pressing reason. He saved your life, albeit in a most…roundabout and painful manner. I know this, and I…owe him certain favors.

  "So here you will stay, Xavier Uriel Ross, until you are ready to continue your quest…or until you find enough inner peace that you find you can let that quest go."

  This is…a storybook moment, Xavier thought, and wondered wildly if he was going to wake up in a minute, with Michael alive so he could laugh at the ridiculous fantasy. But another part of him knew it was real, very real indeed, and that terrified him, because if stories like this came true, the world was something much scarier than he'd ever imagined.

  But the old man was waiting, and Xavier knew why. He swallowed, knowing that in a way the decision had been made a long time ago, the moment that someone laughed into a phone with blood on her hands. "Yes, Sensei."

  Chapter 4.

  Fifteen…sixteen…seventeen . . .

  His arms quivered, his back ached, and his gut—especially the still-tender cut—seemed to be on fire. But I'm not giving up yet…three more . . .

  At the twentieth push-up he let himself collapse face-first, breathing hard. I used to be able to do fifty of those in a row, at least, on a bad day.

  "You are doing well," Sensei said.

  Xavier rolled over to face the mysterious man. "Glad you think so. That was pretty pathetic, I think."

  Sensei chuckled. "Despite the treatment I have given you, most people in your position would probably have given up after one or two." He looked off into the distance, as though thinking. "Are you able to get up?"

  Xavier forced himself to sit up, stand, trying to look as though it didn't hurt, that his arms didn't feel like they were made of rubber and his knees didn't want to buckle like a cheap end table sat on by a St. Bernard. "Sure."

  "Then come with me."

  His legs slowly steadied as he walked across the floor of what he thought of as a dojo, following Sensei. But it's not exactly a dojo. Not a traditional one. It's different.

  The room wasn't even round, as he'd originally thought. It was a septagon, a seven-sided shape a hundred feet or maybe more across. And some of the symbology in here…doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before.

  His Sensei wore an outfit that was similar to a gi or other light training robes, but subtly different, and again not like anything Xavier had seen before. He was also barefoot and appeared to stay barefoot most of the time unless he was venturing outside.

  They stopped near the towering central column, studded with points and edges and rings and pendants of glass, metal, and crystal; Xavier found an area wide enough to lay his hand flat on, pushed; the column swayed slightly, tinkling along its length like crystal raindrops falling. "What do you want to show me, Sensei?"

  "I have been thinking a long time about what I must teach you, and how, and how to be sure we reach a clear end to your training," the old man said after a moment. "Were you simply here to learn, we would have all the time of our lives to take in the teaching. But you have both enemies and family waiting for you, and so we cannot take forever or even half of forever to train you.

  "So I must…specialize your instruction, customize it to give you the skills you will need, even if it skips over aspects of the training I would prefer covered under other circumstances. Those abilities you need will be several; the ability to be unnoticed, the skill to pass where locks and guards would bar your path, and the ability to strike down even those things which ordinary weapons cannot harm."

  Xavier shot a glance at Sensei, but there was no sign of a smile. "Sensei? What…things?"

  "Things that live in the shadow between reality and fantasy," the old man answered after a moment, looking at the column as it finally stopped swaying. "Surely you realized, when you agreed to stay here, that the world you knew was not the whole of the truth."

  He hesitated, but…"I think I realized that when Michael died."

  Sensei studied him for a moment. "Yes, I suppose you did, in your heart. You sensed something, and it was that wrongness, at least as much as the voice of a girl-child, that told you the police had not found, and probably could not find, the killer of your brother."

  Yes. Xavier didn't speak; the subject was creeping him out.

  "Call them monsters, Xavier, or demons. Werewolves and vampires, ghosts and basilisks, things that are perhaps weaker than they once were, but still hide themselves behind the shadows of the mind and away from the eyes of daylight."

  "Michael was killed by . . . ?" He remembered Mike's last words, the ones that hadn't made much sense. "…it's crazy…but I think I've found actual evidence . . . "

  "I think so. Given where it happened, how he died, what you heard…yes. And so you need the ability to hurt that which cannot be hurt by ordinary weapons. You need to become a weapon that can hurt them." Sensei gazed up the column. "At the same time, we need a way to tell when you are done." He pointed up. "This will be your…graduation exercise. You may attempt it at any time."

  "I have to climb to the top?" Xavier looked uncertainly at the spiny column. It looks like a magnified view I saw once of a nettle stem—covered with so many sharp points that it looks almost fuzzy!

  "Not merely climb," Sensei corrected him. "You must climb it noiselessly, reach the very top, and retrieve what I have left there. When you can do that and I do not know you have done it until you present what you have found to me, then I will know you have mastered everything I can teach in our time here."

  Xavier stared at Sensei, then at the column. It sways when I touch it, and it's covered by noisemaking things! "I…Sensei, I don't think that’s possible."

  Sensei smiled at him—a startlingly gentle smile, not one of annoyance or superiority. "I know, it does sound quite ridiculous. Yet . . . "

  Sensei closed his eyes, took a breath, opened them…and stepped up and began climbing. His hand gripped a bladed edge of diamond; his foot stepped up, rest
ed on a sharp steel projection like a steak knife on its back…and he climbed.

  The column did not sway; it moved not a hair's breadth. The white-haired man continued swiftly, confidently, up the column, and there was hardly a whisper of any sound, just the faint, faint hiss of cloth on cloth. He climbed around the column, disappeared for a moment…and then appeared atop the platform, looking over the edge and down.

  How…I've seen that platform many times now. It goes all the way around, sticking out something like eight feet in all directions! Was there a trapdoor or something? There's no way to climb up without using a trapdoor, the underside is just smooth wood, nothing to grab onto!

  He ran around to the other side to see if Sensei would come through a hidden trapdoor…but in a moment Sensei reappeared from the first side, climbing down as easily and silently as he'd ascended, and Xavier was absolutely certain that there couldn't be a trapdoor hidden in the part he'd been just looking at.

  Xavier stared as the old man dropped the last foot or so. "How?" he said, finally.

  Sensei's smile acknowledged the simplicity of the question addressing something that was hardly simple. "You will learn how, in time," he answered. "This martial art is called Tor, and it can take lifetimes to master. I…believe I can teach you some very advanced techniques much faster than any lifetime, even though it will of course leave…gaps in your education.

  "But before we can do that, you need to learn mental discipline and focus—learn it at a level you have never before imagined."

  "Shihan Butler said I was very good at such things." He wasn’t bragging, he hoped. Shihan had often complimented him on this.

  "Good. Then I hope that you will be able to master this discipline soon." Sensei pointed to the mat, and Xavier sat down. "Look at your hand."

  Xavier did. His hand looked as it always did—slender, long-fingered, skin that his mother had always described as coffee with not nearly enough cream, some hairs growing on the back, faint veins. On the other side, creases from long use, calluses (there were some of those on the knuckles, too), the swirls of fingerprints. "All right."