“And let’s not forget ...”
John spun around, a sword drawn in each hand, a spell at the ready. Callin flinched a little in surprise — and took a step back, away from John’s blades — but he obviously recognized the speaker’s voice.
Earlier, Lieutenant Gant had opened the door in a casual manner.
Lieutenant Takayasu had employed a great deal more stealth.
“Let’s not forget,” Takayasu repeated, “that the one thing — the only thing — Vortex said during his moment of consciousness was the name ‘John’.”
He stepped fully into the room, his keen eyes locked onto John’s.
“Your civilian name wouldn’t happen to be ‘John,’ would it?”
TAKAYASU, SHINING STAR, AND THE GLADIUS
Michael reached the observation deck on the heels of Lieutenant Gant, and had his hand on the door handle to walk in, when his ears perked up.
The newcomer, the Gladius, was speaking with Callin, something about the Skygger and ... Callin’s grandfather? He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but decided not to interrupt the conversation in flow; instead, he opened the door with great care — just a crack, enough to hear better — and listened.
From the perspective of an interrogation, Callin didn’t do half bad. By listening in, Michael learned even more about this “Skygger,” which in turn provided a credible explanation for his bizarre encounter with not-Christine. But Callin also latched onto the inconsistencies with Gladius’ initial story and subsequent behavior.
And when Callin had him on the proverbial ropes, with Gladius apparently stumped for an answer, Michael took that as his cue.
Easing the door all the way open, he said, “And let’s not forget ...”
The Gladius spun to face him, drawing both of his short-swords with impressive grace and speed. Callin also stiffened in surprise, but only a touch, as he backed away from the twin blades. Michael had been counting on Callin’s reflexes and superior physical fortitude to help save him if Gladius leaped to the offensive, but luckily, it looked like that wasn’t going to happen — kudos, he supposed, to Gladius for his steady trigger finger.
With the theatrics out of the way, Michael pressed on. “Let’s not forget that the one thing — the only thing — Vortex said during his moment of consciousness was the name ‘John’.”
Moving fully into the room, Michael watched Gladius closely, wishing he could see more of the man’s face than just his eyes.
Sounding so casual it was almost parody, he asked, “Your civilian name wouldn’t happen to be ‘John,’ would it?”
The Gladius said nothing, but — with more of that fluid, balletic movement — returned his swords to their scabbards. He did it without looking down, and Michael was not sure just how he did both at the same time without tangling his arms together. Whoever he was, he had been handling those blades for some time; almost certainly longer than the seven years since the White Flash, and Michael found that just as interesting. Gladius shifted his stance, bumping one boot against that well-worn rucksack of his, which rested at the base of the wall beneath the observation window.
“No comment, huh?” Michael prodded, then shrugged. “Well, I suppose I have to respect the whole ‘secret identity.’ I mean, our friend Vortex down there ...” He pointed through the observation window without taking his eyes off Gladius. “He has a secret identity, and we help him keep it safe. And our friend Powerhouse? He doesn’t have a secret identity, strictly speaking, because his name is on record. But he prefers to keep his face hidden, to protect those he cares about, and we help him with that, too. So, I get it. You don’t want to tell me your name? I get it, I do.” He nodded, then let it morph into a head-shake. “But see, here’s the thing—”
But before he could elaborate on their little dilemma, the Gladius surprised him by saying, “My name is Jaydee.”
“ ‘J. D.’?” Michael repeated, thinking he knew where this was going. He glanced at Callin, who maintained his deadpan expression. Michael did not know if Callin knew Steve’s history well enough to grasp the significance of those particular initials, but he was grateful the alien sovereign was following his lead.
“Not quite,” Gladius corrected, though there was a trace of something in his voice — maybe humor, maybe not. “Jaydee. One word.”
“I see,” Michael said, not buying it but keeping his own poker face while he considered which tactic to try next.
“As you said,” Gladius continued, “I have my own reasons for keeping my ‘secret identity,’ as I’m sure Powerhouse and Vortex do. But perhaps it will make you both feel more at ease if you were to see my face?”
Before Michael could react or respond, the Gladius reached up, popped some sort of seal where his mask connected to the neck of his tunic, then bunched up the surprisingly supple leather-chainmail headpiece in his fist and pulled it off.
Michael could only stare at first. He’d had the gut-feeling that this person, the Gladius, was somehow Steve’s brother, John Davison, long missing and presumed dead. He could not explain how, or why, the elder Davison sibling might have returned from the grave — and, against long odds, having gone paranormal, no less — but Gladius’ behavior, his showing up when he did, his diehard determination to save, and now protect, Steve ...
But the bearded man standing before him could not be John Davison. John and Steve had been fairly close to the same age, and the Gladius (“Jaydee”) looked older than that, a lot older — older even than Mark, the senior member of their little group; if Michael had to guess, he would peg Gladius around fifty. His blond hair was thinning and receding, and showed a healthy amount of grey around the temples. And his face was weathered, like someone who spent a great deal of time in the open sun, and from what Michael could recall, John Davison had been more the bookworm type.
Still ... there was something familiar about the man’s face. It had been quite a while since Michael had looked at the Davison file, so he couldn’t be sure, but ...
Gladius bore little resemblance to Steve, but as Michael remembered, the brothers had always been of different molds, with Steve getting the lion’s share of the athletic genes. Could he be some other relative? No, that didn’t make sense. The Davison’s family tree had few branches; Michael supposed either Steve’s father or uncle might have been close to the right age, but their deaths had never been in question — and besides, the uncle was by marriage to Steve’s aunt, not biologically related to him.
He recalled John’s file photo (though, again, it had been a while), and attempted to picture him at more than double his age. He decided Gladius might be a match. And, as he had been forced to admit when not-Christine had been working him, in a world of superhuman powers, wasn’t it possible, however unlikely, that Gladius’ diverse paranormal abilities might include accelerated or controlled aging — or even outright shapeshifting, like this alleged Skygger?
And, back at the abandoned warehouse, hadn’t the man done something during their fight — taken some undefined and probably paranormal action — that prompted Michael and all the others to, without warning, dial things down a notch? He hadn’t felt tranquilized, as such, but it wasn’t far off. So how could he know that Gladius wasn’t doing something similar at this very moment, making him more malleable, more willing to accept ...
No.
No, he had to put a stop to this whole line of thinking. Was it all possible? Yes. Plausible? Maybe, maybe not. But if he started down this rabbit hole, attributing any and all possible flights of fancy to some paranormal’s secret trick ... how far could he take that before driving himself batshit crazy?
Instead, Michael chose to take a stand, for now. He would accept the credible evidence of his own eyes, and the reliability of his mind, and admit that he was wrong: Whoever the Gladius was, he apparently was not John Davison, back from the dead.
Should further evidence present itself, he would make a reevaluation at that time.
Only after all that did Mi
chael realize the three of them had been standing in total silence for quite a stretch. Callin had continued to follow his lead, and Gladius was obviously content to let him work it out without complaint.
But “Jaydee” evidently sensed the shift in Michael’s mental gears, the conclusion he had reached. “Satisfied?”
Michael allowed, “For now.” He looked to Callin. “Grand Lord?”
Callin rolled his shoulders backward in a Taalu shrug. “I will be satisfied when Vortex is out of danger. I am less concerned with the Gladius’ identity, only his behavior. And he did help Jeremy save Vortex’s life.” To Gladius, he added, “If you are determined to protect Vortex while he is vulnerable, and to help us deal with this Skygger beast, then your motivations are your own business.”
The Gladius nodded his thanks and pulled his mask back into place.
And so the three of them slipped back into silence, Michael joining them at the window, as they watched the surgeons patch Vortex back together.
TAKAYASU AND SHOCKWAVE
Exhausted, Michael shuffled into the private office he shared with Mark and slumped into his chair. Mark hadn’t shown up yet, and for the moment, he was perfectly fine with that.
He had been up all night at the hospital, waiting for Steve’s surgery to end and then getting the recovering hero settled into the same room with Lincoln, who was kept overnight for observation. Michael had asked Lincoln to remain in place — even after he was cleared to leave — to protect Steve, who had yet to regain consciousness when Michael left this morning. As they had arranged for Steve and Lincoln to be placed in a room with no window, Michael assigned Shining Star to stand guard at the only door, since the Taalu required far less sleep than humans, while the Gladius rested in the adjacent room (at least they knew “Jaydee” did sleep like the rest of them; the rare paranormals with mixed-set abilities were always difficult to anticipate). Michael then had to argue, pull rank, and ultimately assist in relocating all other patients either to the opposite side of the floor, and when that filled up, to other floors. The hospital administration promised they would be filing official complaints with the PCA, which was one reason Michael came straight here rather than swinging by his apartment for some sleep; that, plus after learning more about the Skygger, he thought that it would, perhaps, be safer to sneak a nap here in his office.
But first, in spite of the early hour, he tried calling Mia Singh’s number, hoping to ask some questions regarding the “intel” she had provided them, but her phone went straight to voicemail. Had she recovered her mobile since her abduction? Maybe not. Probably not. But he really wanted to talk to her; he sent off a request for some field agents to track her down.
Then he started to type up his preemptive report, got a little blurry on how much detail to include from the night’s disastrous impromptu mission, and ended up sitting back and rubbing his hands over his face. He had so much going through his tired mind ...
The next concrete thing that floated to the surface was: How can Lincoln have a concussion?
Michael wasn’t naïve enough to believe Lincoln was completely impervious to physical harm. He had seen Shining Star knock Lincoln down, Mark had apparently struck some solid blows during their scuffle in the gym last year, and Lincoln managed to break both arms while fighting the Noctoponm.
Last night, Lincoln had described feeling like someone had “popped him one” on the back of his skull, a blow that rendered him unconscious.
But if the Skygger were that physically powerful ... then how had any of them walked away? Why had it bothered to appear to him as Christine, instead of just flapping a hand and knocking his head right off his body? For that matter, why wasn’t Steve cut in half, rather than nearly disemboweled? And likewise, with a punch intense enough to knock Lincoln out, why had such a blow not sent him sailing forward, through the wall and out into the open? What was the reason for such conflicting power-level discrepancies?
Sure, the Gladius described the Skygger to Callin as a “vicious trickster,” so he supposed this could all be part of its game. It liked to sneak around, as much a sadist as a terrorist. But for such a “vicious” creature to possess this kind of power and only use a fraction of it most of the time? That didn’t sit well with Michael. It felt off (as had so many things of late) as though he were working a puzzle that was missing too many—
The office door opened, swinging inward hard enough to bounce against the wall, and Mark ambled in.
“Hey,” Michael said, his sleep-deprived mind forgetting about the unexplained downshift in Mark’s attitude.
Mark was more than happy to remind him by only acknowledging with a disinterested grunt as he flopped into his own desk chair and started browsing his computer.
Piqued, Michael considered letting it go once more, letting Mark work through whatever the hell it was that was bothering him. But he was tired, hungry, and frustrated, and he didn’t have the patience for Mark’s shit right now.
“All right,” he said, raising his voice without bothering to close the door first. “What?”
Mark looked over at him. “What?”
“Exactly. What?” Michael stood up, moving over to stand next to Mark’s desk. “What’s up with you? What crawled up your ass yesterday and turned you into such a dick?”
Mark’s jaw dropped, and at first, all he could do was make vague incredulous noises. Then the clouds returned, he closed his mouth, and spat through clenched teeth, “Are you serious? You’re seriously gonna try to pin this shit back on me?”
“Last I checked, you’re the one acting like an asshole. So yeah, I’m pinning this shit on you. And you couldn’t have picked a worse time—”
Mark bolted to his feet, his chair rolling back too fast so that it tipped and fell over. And if his body language weren’t enough to cut Michael’s speech short, the murderous look in Mark’s eyes would’ve done the job.
“ ‘Couldn’t have picked a worse time,’ huh?” he spat. “Really? That’s some kettle-black, hypocritical bullshit, coming from you.”
Michael rallied, but he was also mindful, for the first time in a long time, that Mark was a Class One paranormal who could easily kill him, if that’s what he decided to do. “What, because Park threw me for a loop about my hands? Is that what this is about? Because if it is, I’m—”
“It’s not about your goddamn hands, you dumbass!”
Mark’s bellow echoed out into the hallway, making Michael question the wisdom of leaving the office door open. Whatever this was, it went beyond one of his moods. There wasn’t just anger in that shout, but pain.
Switching tactics, Michael lowered his own voice — hoping that Mark would follow suit — and asked, “Then what? What is it about? Talk to me, Mark.”
When Mark repeated this time, he wasn’t quoting Michael, he was mocking him. “ ‘Talk to me, Mark.’ Yeah, that’s the shit I wanna hear right now! That really rubs it in, you know what I’m sayin’? Huh? You know what I’m sayin’?!”
Michael had heard his little catchphrase many times over, but it seemed that Mark wasn’t being rhetorical this time. “No, actually, I don’t—”
Mark waved that away with a harsh swing that almost slapped Michael across the face, then he started pacing back and forth. “Droppin’ your little bombshell on me, then tryin’ to act like you still give a shit about me ...”
“I don’t know what ‘bombshell’ you—”
“I’m surprised you’re even here this morning. In this office. I’m surprised you haven’t already shacked up with your new bitch!”
“Mark, what are you talking—?”
“But I guess he’s still down for the count, that it?”
“What the hell are—?”
“That case, I’m shocked you ain’t off holdin’ his wittle hand, waitin’ for his sweet wittle head to stop hurting—!”
Michael had enough. “Mark!”
Caught off guard at having his own volume topped, Mark skidded to a halt mid-pac
ing. “What?” he snapped back, but at a more reasonable level.
But Michael was hot under the collar now, so he didn’t back down. “What. The hell. Are you. Talking about?!”
Mark blinked and looked confused, started to say something, stopped himself, started to look mad all over again, then shook his head and went back to looking confused. “The ... the partner thing.” Then, as if to save some degree of childish pride, he added, “Duh!”
Michael also backed down, but only a little. “What ‘partner thing’? Goddamn it, Mark, I do not know what you are talking about.”
Mark practically growled in frustration. “The— the partner thing. You switchin’ up to Powerhouse.”
Michael was mystified. Had Mark somehow found out about the PCA higher-ups wanting him to switch over to Powerhouse? As far as he was concerned, that was ancient history — the topic had been pretty much dropped since their success against the Noctoponm. And why would he get the idea ... that ...
The penny finally dropped.
“Mark,” he said, all the anger gone, “do you think I told you something last night? Something about changing partners, switching over from you to Lincoln?”
“Well ... yeah. Wait, what are you—?”
“It wasn’t me.”
“If you’re tryin’ to say that you feel sorry—”
“Mark.”
His partner closed his mouth.
“Mark, it - wasn’t - me.”
“... what?”
“You missed it last night, when you didn’t come with me to the hospital.”
Mark looked guilty, and started to get side-tracked. “Yeah, I meant to ask about Vortex—”
“Mark, listen to me. It wasn’t me. This thing that hurt Vortex, the Skygger? According to Gladius, it can read minds, and either create illusions or change its shape, or both. And it likes to get into people’s heads, throw them off balance, say and do things to freak them out. You should hear the trick it played on Lincoln. But ...”
Paranormals | Book 3 | Darkness Reigns Page 27