It’s funny; the things, the places, the people that you always take for granted, those are the things you should hold to most tightly. I learned that in just a short amount of time, and believe me when I say that most things in life are not always as they seem, or as they should be. Sometimes it’s the strongest things, the seeming constants in our lives that can be gone in a moment. The same with life itself, one day you can be living normally, nothing out of the ordinary. But it only takes one moment, a single instant in time, for everything to change. A few have experienced life’s more pleasant surprises, and I hope that they appreciate it when it comes. They’re super rare, and to prove that fact, all you have to do is watch the news. It might take a while, but eventually you’ll see one: some woman that found buried treasure while re-tiling her bathroom, or a four year old boy that inherited a fortune from his third cousin twice removed, whom he never met. If these were everyday occurrences, you wouldn’t be watching them on the news. I don’t resent these people for their glory, it’s the rest that I’m concerned about. Anyone who might be optimistic enough to think that they can expect anything like that. The reality is that a normal life is too much for the average person to hope for.
My story is a perfect example of the above fact.
First off, about myself. My name is Jack Nolson, just your friendly neighborhood recluse. Well not intentionally. I’ll get into that later. I’m right at 50 years old, and you’d probably hate me. That is, if you hate people that do nothing special but eat junk food and sit around the house, but are still 10 times healthier than you. I honestly don’t remember the last time I was sick, and I’m not a young guy either. Oh yeah, while we’re on the subject, there’s not much I do remember. I had an accident a few years back, when I was working as an air traffic controller at a local airport. There was a terrorist group that tried to take control of the whole airport, and they almost did. You might have heard about it in the news, it must’ve been all over the news. I wouldn’t know, because I got hurt when some of the men took control of the control tower. The ins and outs aren’t important; the point is I was basically comatose for a few weeks. When I came out of it I didn’t remember a thing, not even my name.
My friends tried to help me. They basically got me back on my feet, Helped me get to used to living life as I once did. But at the end of it all, I couldn’t go back to the way I was anyway. Everyone really helped me see that I was a strange person before the accident. There was precious little personal information that anyone knew about me. They said that’s how I liked it, and as long as they minded their own business, I was a likable guy. Just not very trusting. At all.
Too bad really. But one thing I truly believe is ignorance is bliss. So I guess it al works out, because it seems that amnesia did wonders for my attitude. After the accident, I basically became a regular guy. I don’t remember any of my past, its true. But just imagine all the things in your life you’ve done that you wish you could forget. Ah, now who’s worse off?
The events you are about to read happened during the course of just over a week, starting on the evening of Saturday, January eighth, 2000. That’s when it started, specifically when I walked in the door of a little diner called the “Quick In” in Brooklyn. This was a diner I went to at least once a day, which I’m allowed to do, being single and all. The man who owned that diner, along with many other establishments in the area, was Chesterfeld Vanderwale IV. Only a rare few knew very much about him, and they were free with the information. However, once passed around a few hundred times, the facts became very distorted. But I’ll tell you anyway. First of all, no one, including Chesterfeld’s "acquaintances", liked him. Not only was Chesterfeld used to getting his way, but he was also, well, a very tall man. Tall in a horizontal kind of way. Everyone said that he did everything he could to make himself look fatter, and apparently he ate like a pig. But that wasn’t the issue at all.
If someone knew one thing about him, it was that he was rich, and that fact made him subject to a lot of stereotyping right there. And Chesterfeld never had to actually work at any time during his life. In fact, he was encouraged not to by his influential 'friends' and relatives, because doing so would show outright disrespect for all the free and easy money he received through inheritance. It seems he was adopted, but he got the money anyway. So somewhere between his heavy gambling and the rumors of other dishonest practices that some said he engaged in, he owned quite a few restaurants and diners in New York State, despite the fact that he wasn’t even blood relation to the money.
I would be surprised to see anyone with his status to even look in the “Quick in”, one of the lesser diners around, much less lower himself to sit on one of the accursed bar stools, most of which were frayed and losing their cushion, exposing sharp edges that would always cut into the back of your leg and thigh. Even I felt pretty low when sitting there sometimes. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw the man himself, Chesterfeld Vanderwale, perched up on a stool at the bar (that was drooping a little more than usual) of that very diner. After making sure I was at the right place, I wondered what I should do. I really couldn’t stand rich people that separate themselves from society, like they were elite or something. But I guess I’m just hard to please, because Chesterfeld’s gesture of visiting this lowly restaurant didn’t move me much either. So I decided to just grab a table and go unnoticed. However, as I found out, Chester had other ideas.
6:30pm Saturday, January 8th, 2000
When I walked into the building, the large man immediately turned to me. I vividly remember the delightful moan of the stool as it spun towards me. I gave him a polite smile. “You’re late,” he informed me bluntly. Then waving a finger in my face, he asked, “My message said 6:00pm sharp, you’re thirty minutes late. Doesn’t matter, point is we have to talk. Follow me to the back room, we can talk there.” I had yet to say a word, but I felt one coming on. I could think of several words I could say at that moment, as a matter of fact. I didn’t really care for the treatment, and i was fairly sure it was a case of mistaken identity. But I had nothing better to do, so I followed him.
He led me into a dark back room with no furnishing but a few chairs and a card table. Kind of like an interrogation room. Or the room at the back of the supermarket where they take shoplifters, while they wait for the cops. He motioned for me to sit; I sat. I didn’t want to, but ever since I went in the room I had the sinking feeling that I was about to be whacked, Godfather style.
A breeze filled the room as Chesterfeld sat down. Now I think I should say that Chesterfeld wasn’t exactly as his name made him seem. You might imagine him as a round, baldheaded, jolly gentleman with a waistcoat, curly mustache, and a spectacle hanging beneath a fuzzy eyebrow. False. To begin with, Chester was not a gentleman, and he didn’t seem to have much age on him, perhaps 45 years at most. He was quite round, but there was nothing cuddly about him. He was one, big, beer-belly. It may be hard to imagine, but that’s the best way it can be described. Some people are fluffy, some people are cuddly, and some people are…a beer belly. In his defense, he was wearing a suit. The suit would’ve looked great on me, but it was obvious that he could barely breathe in it. As a matter of fact, it was so tight that I doubt that the suit could breathe. That was a lot of man for any terrestrial suit to contain.
Chester started speaking. “I know this might seem unusual, but it was necessary that I meet you. I’ll formally introduce myself; I’m Chester Vanderwale, the owner of this establishment.” He again stuck a finger in my direction and said, “Jack Nolson, right?” I said yes, and took this break in the conversation to tell him that I never got a message from him and thus had no idea what he was talking about. I was probably a little irritated with him and showed it, but he was very apologetic, as he finally understood. “Oh, very sorry, I’m not sure what happened. Well, since you’re here, I’ll explain the situation.” Then he stood again, presumably to add to the effect. “I was born of a mother and father that are now dead, no brothers, no sisters. As of now, I have no living blood relatives. I was adopted at the age of six months. My adoptive family--parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, EVERYBODY have done the best they could for me, despite my not being a blood relative! You know, that's what I’ve been told since childhood.”
At that he gave me a sarcastic smile, apparently hinting at something. As for me, I was completely confused and a little freaked out, to say the least. Chester seemed to get a little overheated on that subject, but after he calmed down a little, he began to continue. Before he could, however, his cell phone went off in his pocket. With a sigh he reached in and grabbed it, looking at the screen. He quickly tossed it on the table, telling me “it’s an ‘unknown caller’. Let’s get back to business.” As he opened his mouth to speak again, another ringing could be heard coming from his pocket. Suddenly he started yanking objects out of his pockets, everything capable of emitting sound. They flew across the room like blinking, beeping birds. As for me, I kept my mouth shut. After taking a few deep breaths, as naturally as could be, Chester started his train of thought right where it crashed.
“You know, that's what my parents told me since childhood, about how young and innocent I was when they adopted me, and those few sentences quieted any doubts I could have possibly had about my past. So you can imagine my surprise when, all at once last week, I find out that it is all untrue. Most importantly, I was NOT adopted at the age of six months. At 6 years of age I was taken from my family. And as of now, I have but one living blood relative. ‘Who is that person’, you ask?” I found this statement to be strange, because I didn’t remember saying much of anything, especially not that. so I shook my head, because for me to ask that would give the impression that I cared, and at that point I was still thinking of ways to slip away. Well, if Chester could read my thoughts, he didn’t seem to pay any attention to them. He continued after a short pause and said, “I think that person is you.”
This revelation did surprise me a bit, but again, I was questioning the sanity of the man. So just to be safe, I said nothing. Chester went on, “this may sound crazy, but I was hoping you could remember a boy, a small boy perhaps 5 or 6 years old in your youth, most likely around summer 1962. He may have been a brother of yours; he may have been your cousin. What I mean to say is…that is…if you can remember anything, that information would be invaluable to me.”
Well, I thought, you don’t hear that everyday. I was astounded to see this wealthy man, who I had heard so much bad about, asking nicely – almost begging – for this thing that he seemed to want so badly. And WHAT he wanted – it was unbelievable. I couldn’t believe that we could be related. I told him so, and his disappointment was obvious. He wasn’t done, however.
“Something quite big is going on and I think it is somehow connected to my real father. For all I know my life may be in danger. It would surely be in MY best interests for us to meet first thing tomorrow morning to discuss this, after you’ve had time to think about it. I’ve done some research that may be very important, and who knows, some of this may involve you as well. I think it would be a great mistake for you not to think about it, at least. So you have all evening and night, alright?” Again I shook my head. It didn’t seem at all right to me. “You’re right, this is very unusual. What would be great is if you could give me more information now. I mean, what’s all this about exactly?”
Chester sat back down, squirming a little now. “This really isn’t the time or place…” He seemed to be battling with himself on the matter, but one look at me told him that he’d have to give me SOMETHING for me to take him seriously. After a few more moments of debating with himself, he gave in. “alright, I’ll tell you what I know, though its not much.” This whole time his cell phone and pager were ringing insistently, sitting in a pile in the corner of the room. Even though they survived their violent flight across the room, they continued. Chester seemed to have no problem ignoring them at this point, but he was much more distracted by a sudden bang on the door as he was just beginning to explain. A desperate-sounding voice on the other side yelled, “Excuse me sir, but we have an urgent situation out here that requires your attention!” Chester didn’t flinch, but simply asked what the problem was. The response was something like “um, well, you see…” “That’s what I thought,” Chester said back, and then commanded the intruder to find someone else to bother. He then turned back to me and, after seeing my disoriented expression, decided he needed to recapture my attention after the interruption. So he proceeded to lean over the card table until his face was the desired number of centimeters from my face. Then he started speaking in hushed tones.
“I found out that there was an old but successful secret crime organization called ‘No Just Cause’. I don’t know any more about that, but I know that some American men were captured in London, all accused of being spies working for this organization. They escaped before their trial, but I think that my father was one of them. I can’t be sure, but there is so much mystery surrounding my adoption that I just searched for any events around that time. There were a few other little details that I remember from years ago that lead me to believe that I’m on the right track. Believe it or not, this theory is the only one I’ve come up with that makes some sense. But that is all I know, really, which is why I need your help. Normally I would be very excited just to have found my blood relative, but I feel that there is so much more to be concerned with at this time. You understand, don’t you?” He looked at my wide eyes and sat through a few moments of confused silence, and he somehow gathered from all that that I did, indeed, understand. So he finished, “my car will pick you up at this corner here tomorrow morning at 8:00. Can you meet me?” After a pause, I nodded, though reluctantly. I realized that the next day would be a Sunday, a day I dedicate solely to TV watching, junk food eating, and other general acts of laziness and irresponsibility that nature intended just for Sundays. But I was starting to get interested in what he had to say, and I thought about it on the way home.
You see, my past was always somewhat blurry as well, although I came to accept it. But by blurry, I mean totally indistinct, and that’s something one never gets used to. I couldn’t even remember any family members of my own, including my own parents. Faces, places, and events - I had no memories from my own past. There was a good reason however.
For many years I worked at J.F.K. international airport in New York City as an air traffic controller, and I loved my job. I remember one day six years when ago some kind of gang tried to take over the airport during my shift. It was either at night or at a slow time of day, because there were few in the terminal and I was the only one in the tower at the time. Eventually a few of the thugs broke into the tower and, after a very short confrontation, they took me out. I don’t know how they took me out; EMS that came said I was probably hit over the head with a rifle butt. It really didn’t matter to me how I was taken out, just as long as I lived to tell about it. The only big problem turned out to be a slight memory loss on my part. Not to exaggerate, I remembered all the important stuff, like the capital of Denmark, the height and weight of every quarterback in the NFL – you know, important stuff. It was only the unimportant information that I lost, like my name, what year it was, and absolutely anything that happened prior to 1994. Nagging little details like that.
I had a few friends that tried to fill me in on the more personal information, like family relations, but they offered little help. They said that I never talked about my family or other personal things like that and they assumed that I had none. But when I got home from the hospital, I stepped across the threshold a different man. A man with less than any other, the way I see it. Even a poor man has memories, memories of when he didn’t have to beg, or memories of when he didn’t care. I never realized how bad it really was until I had to be told that I had a wife. She died shortly before my incident at work, and I would never think someone could forget something like that. It seemed that she had no family either, or at least none that I could find. However, my best friend told me some things about her. Even though most of what he told me I had told him in the first place, he helped me get to know her a little. Her name was Jessica, and he personally testified to the fact that she was truly beautiful. With what little information he could give me, I really started to feel the burden that comes with forgetting. I started to miss something I didn’t even remember having. I still do, even six years later. It’s a strange feeling that’s hard to explain. I’d compare it to having something or someone deep in your heart, yet at the same time knowing that it could never really be yours. That’s how I felt when I learned more and more about my wife. Its as if some subconscious part of me still remembers perfectly, and can’t quite live without her. That part of my mind was apparently different from the part that well knew that she was dead, and not coming back.
Because of my own experience, I soon became eager to help Chester. So when I got home I sat right down and tried as hard as I could to remember anything from my childhood. I was so deep in thought that I didn’t consider that I actually could be related to THE Chesterfeld Vanderwale, which was a profound concept in itself. I sat there thinking for a full hour, knowing how much a simple memory would mean, not only to Chester, but to me as well. However, after a while I realized that it was no use. I wasn’t surprised; I had tried many times before to remember something, anything. I now knew that if I wanted answers, I would have to go to elsewhere.
There was an old man I was friends with; he was like a father to me really. I met him soon after I got home from the hospital. We ran into each other by chance in the street, and after a few minutes of walking together, it turned out that knew my father. He told me that they used to chat in the barbershop years ago, but just small talk. He said they didn’t really get personal, and that was his reason for never telling me much about him. That was okay by me, I was always happy to get whatever information he had, like what my father looked like, or who he talked like. He told me those things without hesitation, but I always felt that he knew a little more than he told me. Maybe my motivation was never enough to make me aggressively go after the truth, until that last night. On the last night that I could be oblivious to everything that had been going on around me. On that night I went to the old man’s house. I’ve always put this event as “the beginning”, not the point when I talked to Chester. True, the words of Chester would turn out to have a lot of significance, but I had no way of realizing that at the time. I often think of the last weeks, days, and hours before that night with a degree of regret. I miss those days. Ignorance truly is bliss, and the only people that would refute that probably don’t know much in the first place. Technically, those people should be happier than any of us. If ignorance is bliss, then stupidity must be heaven.
8:15pm Saturday, January 8th
“Daniel!” I yelled up the stairs of the nearly empty building as I began to ascend the stairs. I knew he wouldn't answer, but he lived on the third floor of the big apartment building, and I would have been so peeved if I had to walk all that way and he not be home. I mean, what's going on in his head, that would posses him to live three stories off the ground, when he was the only occupant of the whole building? But he probably had a good twenty-five years on me, so I kept my silence about his strange ways. When I finally made it to the top, Daniel had the door open. "Hey, Jackie boy! Do you know what time it is?" I looked past him into the room, which was an utter mess. “Yeah, its 8:15, since when is that late?”
He rubbed his head and gave a tired sigh. “Sorry Jackie, I’ve been busy.” I pointed to the turmoil behind him. He nodded his head and explained, “I’m packing, moving upstate. I’ve always wanted to get out of this city you know.” I looked at him incredulously. “I thought you said you loved Brooklyn, and nothing could make you leave It.” he shook his head.
“I never thought I’d have to. But it wont be long before I no longer have cause to be in Brooklyn, so I thought I’d get a head start on the packing.”
“Sure you’ve got reason,” I argued. “There’s me for a start. Right?” He didn’t respond, but just looked at me for a second with the saddest face I’d ever seen him make. But the next moment he was asking me “well, what can I do for you?” I decided not to waste any more time on that subject, and I told him what I came for. First, “um, can I come in?” I asked almost as a formality, and as I spoke I moved toward the door. Daniel didn’t budge however, and remained in the threshold. I looked at him, but he shook his head. “My place is a mess, I don’t think this is a good time. Come back tomorrow, if you can.” I wasn’t willing to give up that easy. “I need to know more about my father.” Daniel slapped his forehead, as if trying to knock the statement back out of his head. He grabbed my arm with frustration and started to yank me inside, but then thought better of it and stuck a finger in my face instead. “Wait here, I have to spruce up a bit.”
So I just stood there as he slammed the door in my face. I couldn’t see why he was being so uptight; he usually enjoyed it when I visited him. Maybe the problem was that I always called him before I came, and he never got used to having an unexpected guest. So now, starting to understand his reaction, I stood patiently and listened to the rustle of paper, the slamming of drawers and doors, and an occasional “just a minute” from within. Finally the door swung open and revealed a flustered Daniel saying, “Come on in.” I stepped in to see that the room seemed the same as before, with every surface covered with clothes and boxes. I again decided that it would save time to ignore the little details, allowing for the more important subject.
It was Daniel who begun the conversation. “What can I do you for?” he repeated a little hesitantly, already knowing the answer. I often irritated him with these kind of questions, questions about my father, and his answers were always the same. I always had the nagging feeling, however, that he knew more than he was telling me. “Listen Daniel, I met this guy, and he said he might be related to me. He also said he might have some information on his family, which might be my family. You see why I’m came over, don’t you?”
He nodded slowly as he took a seat in the big armchair across the room. But then he said, “it really doesn’t make any difference, I know what you’re always here for, and I can’t help you. Next subject.” I wasn’t going to let the subject die there. “Why wont you talk to me? I deserve to know.” I was starting to get a little upset, because I could see Daniel was getting to the point where he would lock up and stubbornly stick to his guns. His response showed that he was already there. “Listen, I’ve have given you plenty of information, you just expect more than reasonable. Your father was a fine man, but I can’t say much more for sure. The same is true with your mother; I don’t have much to offer. I know how you must feel, but maybe you should accept the fact that you’ll never know much about your past. Let it go, or its gonna kill you.”
I shook my head, frustrated beyond words. Just as I was about to reply, he stood up and walked over to me, grabbing my shoulders. “It’s going to kill you,” he repeated. I shook my head, after which he shook me by the shoulders and repeated, “It’s going to kill you.” I sighed and nodded my head, but my disappointment was obvious. “I just want the truth,” I said. I was talking to no one in particular, but apparently Daniel thought I wanted a response, because he gave a deep sigh and said, “I hope you never have to know.”
I looked up so fast I almost snapped my neck. He saw my expression and continued, “Yeah, I just realized that it doesn’t really matter. Not anymore.” Apparently I looked too eager, because he was quick to add, “of course, my answer stands, I’ve told you everything I could.” I was confused. “Wait,” I said stepping a little closer to him, “what do you mean ‘it doesn’t really matter anymore’? You’re telling me that you have been holding out on me? How could you do that to me?”
He went and calmly sat back down in his chair, holding up his hands. “You’d better calm down before you burst a blood vessel. And for your information, I didn’t do it to you, it did it for you. But as I said, it doesn’t matter, because you’ll probably know much more than you’d care to know soon enough.” Wrong answer. “I DESERVE to know!” At that Daniel hopped out of his chair, his voice rising above mine. “You deserve nothing! You have NO idea how big this is, but I guarantee you that it is MUCH bigger than you!” He paused here, chuckling to himself as if realizing a certain irony in this statement. “I can also guarantee you that when you find ‘the truth’, it will NOT be a pleasant experience.”
“How can you tell me anything now? Why should I believe the guy that’s been keeping information from me for YEARS, not just any information, but information about my PARENTS? I can’t believe that you don’t think anything of it.” Daniel spoke again, this time with his voice at its normal level. “I did what I had to do, again, not for me as much as for you. In time you’ll come to see why, perhaps sooner than you think. In the meantime you have two choices: either trust me or don’t. All of that small stuff no longer matters to me. Listen to me when I say that this seems like a big deal now, but I can assure you, you’ll have bigger concerns. As a matter of fact, your future is to be much more difficult than your past. Just forget about it.” For a few seconds my mouth just opened and closed, words dying in my mouth before they made it out. Daniel took my shoulders again, but this time with a gentle touch. “You’re tired. Go home and get some sleep, sleep in even, it’s a Saturday night.” I shook my head to that, remembering what I was supposed to do the next day. “I can’t, got an appointment.”
Daniel didn’t seem to hear me. “stay home tomorrow.” He often would give me blunt commands, and I often obeyed. But this time there were bigger things at stake. “I can’t, he might have some information for me. Besides, I want to help him.” Daniel shook his head. “You can’t help him, believe me. He’s beyond your help. Don’t feel bad about it.” I groaned after hearing yet another cryptic statement from Daniel. “You know, I’ve always known just enough to be miserable. I’ve never gotten enough information to feel better.” “It doesn’t get better,” he responded immediately, “and the more you know, the stronger the feeling will get.” He looked down at me with a hint a pity. “But there is something you can do to help.” He paused as I turned towards the window. But then, realizing that this was as much of my attention as he was going to get, he continued. “Total happiness might be out of the question, but contentment is a different matter. Learn how to enjoy what you have, and be able to lose all desire for things beyond your reach. Stay home tomorrow, alright? What you’re after is simply out of your reach.”
I just stood there, unsure. Daniel was my last hope, but I couldn’t accept that I was fighting a losing battle. It certainly seemed that was the case, but I was determined. The only problem now was that I had nowhere to go from there. I thought back to some of what Chester had said. “He said that there was an old secret crime organization called ‘No Just Cause’, spies or something. He said his real father was one of them.” I was no longer looking at Daniel, but I could feel that he was looking at me hard after that. I didn’t care about that though. My good friend Daniel, who I used to trust, was making no sense and was making light of a very serious situation. A once in a lifetime opportunity seemed to be slipping through my fingers. It was silent for a while in the apartment, which seemed to worry Daniel. After a few minutes he gave the final word on the matter, when he said, “Just forget about it, before this thing kills you. It might do just that. Look, I can understand that you’re mad at me, I can understand why. You have to make your own decision. But if you remember anything, remember this: when you choose a path, you choose its destination. Choose wisely.”
I let Daniel escort me to the door, down the stairs, and into the street. I didn’t want to go. I had nothing, I knew just as much at the end of that day as I did the day before. After a while of walking down the dark Brooklyn streets I had to smile, upon realizing how stupid the situation was. You know, like setting up the wading pool full of lime-flavored Gelatin, the cream-filled pies, and of course the specially made bobby-trapped welcome mat with the built-in weight sensors, just to find out that YOUR mailman was sick that day. You know what I'm talking about. Anyway, most of the day's events went right over my head, although everyone else seemed to understand a lot more then me. That did bother me, I’ll admit, but my biggest problem was that I then knew too much to be blissfully ignorant, but still not enough. Not enough to feel better. I still haven’t gotten used to that feeling to this day.
9:00pm Saturday, January 8th
I opened the door to the large house in Brooklyn Heights, my house. Some wondered how I was able to keep such an expensive home. Mind you, I never talked to these people; their very existence irritated me. Perhaps that’s not a fair statement, but I don’t think I have to answer to nosy neighbors or prying postal workers. However, if I did, I would tell them that it was already paid for. Between that and the car I owned, I came to the assumption that my wife’s job and mine paid quite well. After my accident and memory loss, I started getting regular checks from the airline I worked for, which pays the remaining expenses. The expensive house and car gave me an idea of how I used to be before the accident, and how much I had changed. Aside from those two items I lived a pretty simple life after the accident, as anyone would gather from going into my house. There weren’t even any pictures, which did prove confusing at first. That’s why I never knew what my wife looked like. The house was sparsely furnished, with many of the rooms lying empty. When I ran out of things to buy I just put the remaining money from the month in savings. I never touched my savings because I never went anywhere. Most of these last six years I not only lacked imagination, I also lacked motivation. Thus, my home was my castle. So when I came home from seeing Daniel, I immediately felt a little better once I hopped on the sofa. I didn’t allow any of what Daniel said sink in, but instead I chose to disregard every bit of it. I switched on the TV, though I’m not sure what I was watching at first. At first I was just thinking again about how much I could’ve learned from whatever information Chester had. I still intended to show up, but I would have had no way to be sure that what he knew really applied to me.
It was about this time that I realized how tired I was. My body was begging for sleep, and I’m not one to argue. My thoughts, however, just would not leave me alone. Half of me was still trying to remember any past event that might be useful, while the other half of me was telling me how stupid the first half was. Needless to say, all of this going on made sleep somewhat difficult. After a few hours of doing a little bit of nothing, I finally fell asleep while watching the news. It wasn’t the best sleep I’ve ever had, although I’ve had worse since.
8:10am Sunday, January 9th
I woke up to the sounds of sirens. They were coming from the TV, which was still on the news channel. Immediately I looked in the lower corner of the screen, afraid to see what time it was. 8:10am said the little clock, confirming that I was indeed late. I jumped off the couch, and after quickly checking the temperature gauge I decided to grab my coat. It’s a good thing that I did, because only while putting on my coat did I pause a second, and I glanced at the TV. A video was showing on the news with wailing ambulances and police cars, and the words “Breaking News – New York Tycoon Murdered” across the bottom. I immediately stopped buttoning up my coat and turned up the volume. A police officer was asked to explain the situation, and he appeared on the screen as he started.
“Well, according to eyewitnesses, Mr. Vanderwale was standing on the corner of Clinton Street and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn when an unknown man came up to him. After just a few seconds gunshots could be heard, although we believe that the gunman’s primary intent was just to rob Mr. Vanderwale. By the time we made it to the scene he was dead, and we have not found the gunman as of this time. So all we can say at this time is that Chesterfeld Vanderwale is dead, and his body is currently at New York Methodist Hospital on Sixth Street.”
Wow, I thought. I sat down, trying to wrap my mind around the situation. The news anchor had moved on to the next story, but I was just then realizing that Chester was dead. To be perfectly honest, his death in itself surprised me, shocked me. But what hurt was the fact that he might have taken with him facts, sources, pieces of my past. That did hurt, because once again I had just a taste, a glimpse of something that could change everything. He had it. I wasn’t even sure what he knew exactly, but it was something. And it all went with him. I went down to the corner where he was shot, though I’m not quite sure why. It was the corner where he asked to meet me, and I assume that he was waiting for me. That fact made me feel even worse, because if I were on time, he probably wouldn’t have died. That’s what I assumed, though I knew it wasn’t necessarily true. If I had been on time, I would’ve been there at 8:00am sharp, right when the murder occurred. Perhaps neither of us would have died; perhaps both of us would’ve been killed. I guess I just felt like I abandoned him, and he shouldn’t have died alone. That sounds crazy, but that’s how I felt. I thought all this while I was walking down the street, making myself feel worse and worse. I stopped by the police station, trying to find out if Chester had anything important on him when he died, like books or notes perhaps, but of course no one let me see his things. I wasn’t surprised at their response, but I was desperately trying to hold onto any hope. At one point I even went to see Daniel again, even though I got nowhere with him the night before. When I came to his door, however, I found that no one was home. The door was open, and when I stepped in, I found that the apartment was empty. No Daniel, no furniture, no nothing. Just from that short morning, perhaps you can feel my frustration.
I sat in front of Daniel’s door, not thinking, just sitting. I knew that I was really no worse off than I was before I met Chester, and I tried to let that sink in before I took another step. So I sat. I didn’t let myself think about the fact that Daniel suddenly decided to leave town, or that he completely cleared out in one night. I didn’t think about the fact that Chester was murdered at almost the exact time we were to meet, in the very spot. I wasn’t even bothered by the fact that these both happened the same morning. It didn’t worry me at the time. But then there was a moment when I thought about my conversation with Daniel the night before. Then, and only then, did I really start to think. And everything started to come together in my head. And once those wheels started to turn, another precious piece of my ignorance ended.
First of all, the very fact that Daniel decided so suddenly to move was suspicious. He told had me numerous times that wild horses couldn’t drag him out of the city. Besides that, he told me that he had no family, and that he thought of me as a son. I couldn’t imagine why he would leave and live somewhere else where he would be completely alone. That alone was strange, but it got stranger, and I was surprised that I didn’t see it at first.
Once I thought about it, I could remember that Daniel kept repeating phrases throughout the conversation, like “Let it go, or its gonna kill you.” One would usually say something like that in a light tone, perhaps sarcastically. But Daniel said it looking me straight in the eye, with a certain gravity that made my skin crawl. He also kept telling me to stay home the next day, in affect telling me not to meet Chester at all. I ended up taking his advice, though by accident, and if I hadn’t I might have been in Chester’s shoes. That was no coincidence. And again, he made such a big point out of it, even though I didn’t pay any attention. It didn’t take much imagination to determine that he was trying to tell me something; I just had to figure out what. I hated to think that he was involved with Chester’s death, and I couldn’t see why he would be, but the two events were definitely related. I burned my last few brain cells trying to figure out what Daniel meant when he said “you have no idea how big this is.”
I got up and walked down the stairs, a little less carefree than when I came. I looked at everything differently from that point on, almost expecting death in every shadow, around every corner. For instance, I saw a homeless person, with ragged clothes and all, get up off the sidewalk and walk behind me. It wasn’t something I would normally notice, but then again, it’s not something that normally happens. So considering the condition I was in, it really bothered me. The man was a ways behind me, and after a while I just stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and let him pass. He passed right on by and turned the corner, and I just figured that I was being paranoid. But when I looked around the corner he turned, the street was empty. I immediately flattened myself against the wall of the building, wide eyed and hyperventilating, thus making myself look like I had just escaped from the insane asylum. To make things worse, I was talking to myself, telling myself that the hobo just went into a building, or perhaps he was never there in the first place. I was in the process of accepting that when I noticed a woman with a stroller standing nearby. She had stopped about when I did, and now she was busy talking on her cell phone, which the normal person could do while walking. That would usually be the point when I would think how that was somewhat weird and move on. But on this day I was seeing everything, and for some reason I took a second look at the stroller. It was empty. The lady, diaper bag and all, had either misplaced her infant, or had found that lugging baby-related equipment made for an effective workout. Honestly, I didn’t buy either of these possibilities, so I proceeded to get out of there as fast as I could, not even wanting to think about the strange things going on all around me. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. I’m not usually the kind to panic, but I will admit that I felt very relieved when I saw a policeman in the block ahead of me. I don’t know why, I had no intention of saying anything to him. He was standing under a tree eating a bagel, and I was perfectly content to just sit on the bench next to him. I always connected police officers with safety, and rightly so. But after a few minutes I found myself sneaking suspicious glances at policeman, who had finished his bagel but was still standing there. I looked him up and down, seeing nothing out of place. Then his cell phone rang, and I watched as he grabbed it off his belt. The belt was loaded, and I scrutinized the badge, the nightstick, and the handcuffs. Then there was the gun, and what a gun it was. It was fat and at least eleven or twelve inches long, not the standard issue for the NYPD, that much I knew. It fit nicely in its holster, which was specially made. I could tell because of the small slot that allowed for the laser sight on the top of the gun. My feeling of security was gone, as suddenly I no longer felt safe sitting next to the officer.
I took off down the street, thinking I could get away from whatever was chasing me. If you’ve ever felt like you were being watched, multiply that feeling by ten and then forget it because you’d have no idea what kind of panic I was experiencing. After that everybody seemed to be either following me or watching me, and if you’ve ever walked the sidewalks of New York City at midday you know how crazy that feeling would make you. I had to wade through the sea of humans, the whole time wondering which one was my assassin-to-be. At one point I could’ve sworn that a little old lady tried to impale me with her umbrella. Fortunately we were on opposite sides of the street, which fact undoubtedly saved my life. I became so paranoid that I decided that I would meet certain death if I continued walking, so I hailed a cab. I didn’t really expect one though, because there were people lining the street with their hands high in the air, trying to do the same thing. Besides that, I seldom rode in cabs, and I found that I often lacked the sheer aggression that most New Yorkers were born with. But the second I walked up to the curb and lifted a hand, like magic a cab flew down the street towards me and screeched to a stop inches from me. I jumped back at first, but then got in, beating off several greedy pedestrians that wanted the cab for themselves. I was happy for the prompt service, and I was also relieved that the driver wasn’t the kind to talk to his passengers, as we rode in blessed silence for a solid eight minutes. I let myself slide into the seat, finally able to relax. The driver drove like he had some sense, and it wasn’t long before he said, “here we are.” I looked out the window and sure enough, there was my house. As I paid the man, I reflected on the total silence that I was enjoying in the backseat, and how I had not yet said a word to the driver. A question popped into my mind at this point, though I was afraid to ask. “Um,” I started, wondering how to phrase the question, “I know this sounds silly, but did I ever even tell you where I lived?” I was relieved when he said, “of course you did…”. Then to confirm the fact he added, “99 Willow Street, right?”
I flew out of that cab as if the cabbie had grown a second head. At first I had easily believed that a little memory loss had mixed in with my terror, until he said my address. As the cab sped off I stared at my house. It sat on the corner of Willow and Clark Streets, and the address was indeed 99 Willow Street. However, it sat facing the other street, and the address wasn’t visible from a car. I have never known a person to find that house with only the address to go by, much less go straight to it like the cabbie did. Either he was just that good at his job, or something was up. I wished that I could tell Daniel that I was starting to realize how big this was. At the time I still didn’t know what “it” was, but I knew it was big, and in time I would know. And as Daniel predicted, when I did find the truth of the situation, it did NOT prove to be a pleasant experience.
Afternoon Sunday, January 9th
I didn’t sleep well that night, needless to say. After I got home I just cleaned for a couple hours. Yeah, a couple hours. I always cleaned or rearranged things when I was stressed or worried about something, and my friends always reminded me not only how unmanly that was, but also how irritating it could be. It might’ve been all right if I cleaned a messy house, but my house was always clean. I was only one man, how much mess could I make? So I walked around like a crazed maid that didn’t take her medication, disinfecting the underside of tables and steam-cleaning the welcome mat. Through all this I continued to speculate on what the recent events really meant. By 11:00pm I had determined that “No Just Cause” was just another name for some government organization, and they killed Chester to keep sensitive information from getting out. As far fetched as that explanation may seem, it sounded perfectly reasonable to me. It was a morbid train of thought, but then again, that’s the kind of thing you read about and watch on TV. I couldn’t, however, place Daniel in the equation anywhere. I couldn’t believe that he was involved in the sinister aspect of the situation, so I put him as an unwilling participant, perhaps another victim. Blackmail maybe, I guessed. I thought back to some of the crime dramas I religiously watched, and I was surprised I hadn’t figured it out sooner. So with that little mystery solved, I went to sleep.
That is, I went to bed. But for a long time I lay still in my huge bed, trying to listen for the men in the shadows that I knew were there. I was losing it; I could almost feel myself losing touch with reality. But really, can you blame me? People have lost their minds over pettier things. Of course there were no men in the room, and I knew that in the back of my mind. But the rest of my senses were not as logical. I felt like a little child with his covers tucked under his chin, assuming that if he makes an airtight seal around his body, the boogieman couldn’t get him. Even though I had gotten quite used to not being in control of my life, this was a new situation that I didn’t know how to face. I suspected something much bigger than I, an invisible force as silent as a shadow in the dark. It is one thing to not know your past, but it’s an altogether different thing to be uncertain about your future, or if you even have one. Feelings like this are far too common, but not natural. No one should have to live that way. Someone once said that death is not when you’re no longer alive, but when you no longer have a life. On second thought, maybe I made that up.
AM Monday, January 10th
Monday morning was uneventful, mostly because I never left the house. In my nervous boredom I ended up eating several breakfasts, and at one point I was actually entertained by a Spanish soap opera. I assume that they’re not supposed to be humorous, but somehow this one was. In it, this guy with a big mustache caught his wife eating dinner with a really buff dude with spiky hair and a shirt that he clearly got from Baby Gap. So her husband pulled out his machete and threw it at the guy, but she jumped in between then and got hit in the hand. Then she went into a coma, both men started crying, the buff guy tore his shirt, and the husband tried to end it all by stabbing himself in the spleen with a nearby ladle. This scene might have had some people on the edge of their seats, but I think for me something was lost in translation, or in the lack of it. But this wasn’t really me to begin with, because the circumstances then were a little strange. I felt like I was waiting for something, but I couldn’t imagine what. Then again, I may have been confusing that with my feeling like a trapped rat. I did feel like that, trapped in my house by my own fear. In reality though, nothing had happened to me at all, and I was starting to think that I was just blowing the whole thing out of proportion. I kept telling myself that people get murdered every day, and Chester was a well-known, wealthy person. I also told myself that the rest of those things could’ve been coincidences, which seemed completely possible. I finally started to feel better, which is a pleasant little side effect of over-rationalization. I ended up feeling so good that I was thinking of actually leaving the house the next day to attend Chester’s funeral, which was open to the public. After all, I figured that I owed it to him, not that he would have held it against me. Dead people tend to be very forgiving, you know. So I got up, got dressed, and started to think about what I could do that was actually productive.
About that time I heard a knock on the door. I was always a little surprised when someone came to my door, because aside from salesmen and other people I don’t know, they rarely do. I had few friends back then, and I figured out that most of my ex-friends were so because of my wife. Apparently most of them split when she died, which further tells me about her endearing personality. But back on the subject, my one real friend was at the door that morning, all smiles. His name was Allen, and I met him when I was working at the airport. He was a pilot for one of the airlines, and we hit it off immediately, long before Jessica died. He was the one that filled me in on some of the more important details of my life between the day we met and the day I lost my memory. Needless to say, I was glad to see him, partly because his job often kept him out of town.
I invited him and his big smile in, and I started to realize that this was no mere social visit. The conversation started the normal way, with how-you-been’s being exchanged. However, the average male is somewhat handicapped when it comes to small talk, so it wasn’t long before he was forced to come to the purpose of his visit.
“So, my friend,” he started, “are we ready for tomorrow?” I looked at him confused, and his face instantly dropped, as if I had just sacrificed his firstborn to the devil himself. “You didn’t forget, did you?” he asked accusingly. I shook my head firmly, but I had no idea what he was talking about. He walked over to the couch and flopped down on it with visible disappointment. “We’re going to the Knicks game, right? Come on now, you said you would get the tickets, please tell me you didn’t forget!” I had. But I wasn’t going to admit it. I went another route instead.
“I didn’t say that,” I said, thinking fast, “I’ve just been really distracted lately. You have no idea what has been going on.” He just shook his head at me, so I had to explain. “No really, it’s been insane! For instance, it all started Saturday when…” but just then the phone rang, stopping me mid-sentence. I motioned to Allen, and he leaned over to check the caller id. He looked at me suspiciously and said, “It’s the police, what’d you do?” “What does it say?” I asked. Allen was starting to lose his cool. He looked at it again, and then answered “New York City Police!”
I jumped up immediately and ran to the phone, getting there just in time to stop Allen from answering it. I must have had a strange expression on my face, because Allen started to panic, yelling various things to me that I wasn’t listening to. He was probably starting to think that I was fugitive, but I wasn’t going to give him the explanation he was wanting. Partly because I didn’t have one yet. But I finally put a hand up to quiet Allen as the caller started to leave a message. It begun, “Yes, this is Captain Green of the NYPD, calling for a Mr. Nolson, we I need to talk to you on an extremely urgent matter that concerns you and your loved ones, I need you to call me back the second you get this message, I am at my office, you may call me at the following number…” The message went uncompleted, because I pushed the stop button on the machine. Allen lost his mind, asking what I was thinking, there was something urgent that he needed to tell me, it could be a matter of life and death. But I knew better.
“Listen Al, you don’t understand. THIS is the kind of thing that has been going on the past couple of days. That call wasn’t from the police station, that wasn’t a Captain.” What Allen didn’t know was that when someone makes an outgoing call from one of the inside lines of a police station, i.e. an office, the caller id is always blocked. I knew that from when I worked at the airport, where sometimes we had to delay flights that had caught the police’s attention for various reasons. And I was quick to remember it when Allen told me who was calling. Someone was calling impersonating a police Captain, and at that point I no longer believed in coincidences. I quickly told Allen what had happened over the last two days, although it was hard to keep his attention. The whole time I was talking the phone was ringing non-stop, though no more messages were left. Then at one point there was a loud crash outside that sounded like a car accident, and it was everything I could do to keep Allen from going outside to see. I couldn’t seem to convince him that there were things going on all around me that I couldn’t see, but I could feel. He rationalized it all away, much like I did earlier that very morning. Even after he realized that I wasn’t just making excuses for forgetting the game tickets, his answer seemed simple.
“I know it’s been hard since you lost your memory, I can only imagine. But this is too weird to believe, you gotta know that. Besides, this isn’t the first time you’ve had some far-fetched story about people out to get you. Before the accident, you’d sometimes talk about how the U.S. government is lying to everybody, even that the Presidents were fake or something. I don’t know what all, but it always seemed that there was some end-of-the-world theory you were trying to get me to swallow.”
I had been shaking my head since he said the word ‘but’. “Listen, I don’t know about all that, that was before. You even told me how different I am now, so I’m not just imagining it. Come on, my life could be in danger or something.” He just nodded and stood up. “Yeah well, let me know how that goes. In the meantime, are we going to the game or not?” I dropped down into a nearby chair, not surprised at the reaction. The words sounded strange coming out of my mouth, and I even took a second to make sure I wasn’t crazy. But I was sure. I next focused on what apparently was Allen’s chief concern. “I think I’ll be gone tomorrow evening, so I won’t be able to go to the game with you. Sorry, but I will get a couple tickets and leave them in the kitchen for you. You can come in and get them before you leave tomorrow.” He seemed a little disappointed, but since he was getting two free tickets he wasn’t in a position to complain. We exchanged a few more words, just the regular stuff. Then as I walked him to his car we both looked around for the cause of the sudden crash we had heard just minutes before. The street was empty, and I wanted to bring this to his attention, but I didn’t think it would do any good. Instead I asked him a question that I had been wondering for a while.
“Allen, there’s something I’ve been wondering for years,” I started as he got into his car, “why are there no pictures in my house? Of me, of Jessica, friends, anybody?” Allen didn’t even stop to think as he answered, “Oh, some guys came and took ‘em when you first went to the hospital. I know what you’re thinking, and I WAS watching the place for you. But they were in suits, and I was afraid that they were going to repossess the place or something. I was just glad they only wanted the pictures and a few knick-knacks.” I nodded, wondering why I wasn’t told that before. That revelation seemed minor at the time, so I said goodbye to Allen and went back in the house.
The rest of the day was surprisingly…normal. I finally left the house that evening to go get Allen’s tickets, this time taking my car. I felt relatively safe in it; otherwise I wouldn’t have gone at all. It was an expensive luxury sedan, so much so that I sometimes got worried with it being on the street. But it was paid for, so I didn’t dare get rid of it. After I got the tickets I slowly made my way home. I was being extra careful, extra watchful. But nothing happened, and I got home safe and sound. Half the night I listened for any stray products of my imagination that might try to jump me, but there was nothing, much to my relief. Right before I went to sleep I determined for sure that I was going to Chester’s funeral the next day. And I did. Like most things in life, I came to regret my decision soon enough. But I’ll get to that part soon enough.
Tuesday Evening, January 11th
The Graden Chapel, just outside Litchfield Connecticut, is the perfect place for a wedding -- pristine, secluded, and very cheery on days such as these. Surrounded by trees and open fields, the early 19th-century building was host to many celebrity weddings through the years, and is a truly beautiful building, inside and out. However, my reason for going there was not a cheery one at all. I was there for a funeral, one that probably should have been mine, too. I was just standing outside, trying to convince myself that I didn't HAVE to go in if I didn't want to. I hate funerals, and this one was no exception. I hate the crying, I hate the sadness, and most of all I hate thinking about the crying and the sadness. Besides, I had been racking my brain, trying to figure out why so much was happening to me out of all people. By the time I got to the funeral I was mentally exhausted, and in no mood to think about death. But then I thought that if I didn't have to talk to any mourners, I might be able to keep my sanity. So since I seemed to be the only person there, and I was twenty minutes late besides, I figured it was safe to go in. You see, Chester was not a very well liked person.
The Chapel was completely empty. It was a beautiful place, and it felt very…warm. I felt like I had been there before, though I couldn’t imagine when. I guessed it had been on TV one too many times. I walked to the front of the large room, feeling less and less comfortable as I went. Something about the minister. He was standing near the podium, staring at me with no apparent expression. I stopped halfway, staring back at the short guy, who didn’t flinch. He must’ve been old enough to be my grandfather, and I’m no young buck. Though I usually respect people of his age, especially since half of them are at half-mast mentally, I remember distinctly disliking this one. Before he even spoke.
He was wearing a nice suit, and as I got closer I realized that he was dressed for a cocktail party, not a funeral. At least not as a minister. And the shining tie pin confirmed the fact that he was not ministering to anyone. I stepped up to the small stage, looking up to see if he’d snap out of it and speak. He did. Looking back, I didn’t really expect him to say anything thaht would help my day any. So what followed I was able to mostly take in stride.
“Jack,” he said, extending an ancient hand. I took another step forward. “Who are you?” I asked, ignoring the friendly guesture. I honestly felt very uncomfortable at the moment, so I was in a hurry to get the encounter over. He simply lowered his head and chuckled. “Your reaction to seeing me would almost convince me that you remember me,” he said in a somewhat condescending way. Then putting on a frown he added, “but you don’t remember, do you jack?”
I obviously didn’t. But that didn’t really bother me, and I told him so. “There’s a lot of things I don’t remember.” I read his snotty posture for a minute. “You seem like one of the people I would love to forget. Maybe those terrorists did me a favor.” He seemed to get a kick out of that. “of course, the terrorists were the cause of your memory loss.” He stooped down next to me over the side of the stage, as if he was gonna tell me a secret. “I’ll confess to you right now, we got lazy on that one.” A big smile spread across his face. He stepped down and started to walk small circles around me. As if he was examining me. “Yeah, we gave that one to the new guy. I told him to come up with something good. that’s what he gave ya.” He shrugged and patted me on the back. “Sorry we stuck you with that lame explanation for these years.”
I tried hard to keep my mouth shut, trying not to complicate matters by adding my questions to the nonsense he was speaking. “who are you?” I asked, quite firmly. “I don’t know how you know ANYTHING about me to begin with, but don’t waste your time. I wouldn’t believe a word you say, even if it made sense.” When he heard my firm tone it obviously dampened his cherry mood, because he responded, “I don’t think that’s what you should be concerned about. You knew me once, and before you so unfortunately forgot, I made you who you are…what you were, that is.”
“What was I?”
There was a long pause. He looked me up and down once more, then stepped by me toward the rear of the room. “I’ll make you a deal,” he started over his shoulder. “You give me what I want, I’ll give you what you want. You show me who you are, I’ll show you who you were.” And before I could say another word, he was out the doors and I was standing there alone, my newly created bubble popped, and even more questions in my head. I walked over to the closed casket. Seemed like a good place to be, Chester was pretty lucky, come to think of it. I peeked inside, planning to tell him so, perhaps thinking it might be some small consolation to him. The casket was empty. Naturally.
The ride home was even less fun than my afternoon had been. It simply wasn’t possible, in my view, for any matter this complex to center around me. I had always minded my own business, and there was absolutely nothing about me that would stand out in a crowd. It was my modesty, if nothing else, that kept me from believing that what was happening to me was real. Yeah, lets go with that.
When I finally got back from Connecticut, I was completely spent, especially mentally. During the long drive I wasn’t able to make sense of anything, and I was desperately hanging on to the possibility that this was somehow a very complicated prank, or perhaps just a misunderstanding. It wasn’t working. I felt like I was suffocating in all the confusion, and there was no end in sight. First there was Chester’s revelation, and then there was his death. Next Alan’s visit made things even worse, and finally the old man at the funeral was the cherry on top.
I sat in my car for a moment, sitting in front if my house, head back, eyes closed. What an unbelievable week, I thought. I can’t wait to just be home, I swear I’ll never leave the house again. I let my head roll to the left, allowing me to look at my castle. I almost smiled as I dared this whatever-it-was to try to bother me on my own turf. “Huh…” was what I said however. The house was pitch black, not a light on, inside or out. The other houses on the block had power, so the effect of seeing my house this dark was somewhat ominous. I never left home for the evening without leaving a light or two on, and this day was no exception.
When I opened the door and stepped into the house, a now familiar paranoia returned. A very strong and bizarre feeling swept over me, which told me that no matter what I did, my next step would be my last. True, it’s often a highly irrational feeling, but the danger felt very real right then. There was even something in the air… a smell that was very familiar to me. Familiar In a bad way. I hadn’t taken a step, and already my stomach was churning with nervousness. But since it’s hard to distinguish blind paranoia from good sense, I ignored it. I flipped the light switch on. No light, no power. I sighed in relief; glad there was a logical reason for the darkness.
As I started to walk toward the kitchen, I pulled out my key chain light. As I waved it around, I felt a certain comfort from seeing nothing out of place, everything clean. This was due to the past Sunday’s cleaning frenzy, and it really helped. At the time, my home seemed like the only thing still under my control alone, and walking through it seeing it untouched made me feel a little more secure.
Then I noticed a can of soda sitting on the coffee table, a can I didn't remember putting there. So I did exactly what I normally did: I picked it up and went to throw it away. But first I jiggled the can, without thinking. Hearing a tiny slosh at the bottom of the can, I shrugged and tipped it up to my mouth. I remember noticing that the soda was fizzing as if it were newly opened, which seemed strange considering that I had been gone for nearly five hours. Just as it came up close to my nose I faintly remember realizing what the strange smell was, or at least what it reminded me of. I thought to myself in the moments before I swallowed, "You’re an idiot," though that fact is no divine revelation.
And that was it.
Seconds after I drank it, I felt it. I felt as if my brain, my whole head was suddenly filled with steaming hot lava. I felt disoriented, but it was as if the whole world around me had slowed down, and my movements seemed jerky and quick. The light had fallen from my hand, and once again the room was pitch black. But as the pain in my head got worse and worse, the room got brighter and brighter, or it seemed to. All the faint sounds around me suddenly seemed to get loud, from the ticking clock to the slow movement of air from the heat registers. So loud they became that the lava in my head became unbearable. I ignored the new noises, the bright room, even the pain that started to spread throughout my entire body. But then a voice in my head commanded me to sleep, and suddenly I was very tired. So I slept.
"Hello, Jack."
I lifted my head slowly. I felt as if it would fall off at any moment, so I took my time. I looked up to see a smiling old man looking down at me. The same old man I saw at Chester's funeral. He looked like his mood had improved dramatically since I had seen him last. As for me, I had seen better days physically, as I seemed to be lying on the ground in a large, park-like courtyard with buildings all around. But the rest of me had no complaints. It took me a minute before I was lucid eough to notice, but I was wearing completely different clothes. I couldn’t help but jump up when I saw the tuxedo I was wearing, complete with dinner jacket, tie, and a very expensive looking platinum watch. A small yet heavy pendant was sewn onto the lapel. It consisted of two solid gold letters: J.C. Encircling them were a ring of silver an inch thick. And I won’t even get started on the shoes. And everything fit me perfectly, as if they were mine to begin with.
"That is yours, you know. The tux, that is. You wore it on your 29th birthday. The pin, the tie, the shoes, everything is yours. This whole compound," he waved a hand at the courtyard and the surrounding building, "was built mostly for your comfort and training. You were the most important experiment we ever took on. Very expensive, too." He gave me a big smile. "But I guess you don't remember, do you?" I just stood there, still wondering where I was. "That's what I thought you’d say, and I've been waiting for this moment for twenty-one years, so I'm well prepared. Come with me, and get that dumb look off your face."
"Where are we?" I said, not moving, with a dumb look on my face.
"No," was his flat response, as he turned around to face me. "I will tell you that you’re a long way from home, so if you plan to be at all stubborn with me, you’ll have a long walk back." He crossed his arms impatiently. “now may we go, my time is very expensive and even more limited” In the absence of a snappy comeback, I followed him. We walked across the open compound, which was empty aside from a few trees and a pond on one side. It was quite nice actually, but at the same time it felt like a prison, not a feeling I liked. The aged man led me through the empty halls of the circular building, the one building that surrounded the large courtyard, to a large office, about the size of the whole first story of my house. There was a huge window the length of the wall, and a small desk in front of it. On the other wall there was a large fireplace with a roaring fire burning in it. A royal looking recliner sat in front of it. The rest of the huge room was bare. Everything looked very unused, and there was a thick layer of dusk on the desk. The room smelt like someone had died in it, but we walked in nonetheless.
He asked me a question, but I wasn't listening. I was looking out the window, which was at least 40 feet wide and fifteen feet tall. While I was outside I noticed that it was daylight, and the clock read 11:44am. But as I looked out the window I saw a graveyard at night and a view of the ocean just beyond. It was no picture though, because I could see animals moving slowly among the tombstones. It was extremely gloomy, as far as night graveyard scenes go.
The man saw me staring at the window. "When we sent you to North Berwick in the British Isles, this place on the coast, for some strange reason, caught your eye. You didn't want to leave. But we came up with a compromise. This is actually a live video feed from North Berwick, in the exact place you chose: a cemetery near the coast."
He tapped the corner near the wall and the dark, gloomy scene faded and instead a picture of deserted straw huts and sand dunes appeared, as realistic as the last. "Sahara dessert," I guessed, figuring that if I could ease my way into conversation, I could work my way up to making sense of what was going on.
"Why yes, it is. How very clever of you."
I nodded silently but said nothing. He waited a moment, giving me a chance to continue. I couldn’t think of anything to say. "Using you wealth of knowledge of both chemistry and electrical engineering,” he started again, “you developed, in your spare time, this screen. Its a TLCD, or Transparent Liquid Crystal Display. With a touch of a button it goes from a hi-resolution touch screen, to nothing more than a window." He touched a button on the desk, giving me a big smile, hoping to squeeze a reaction out of me. At the time though I couldn’t care less about a big TV. The screen started to retract into the floor. "Welcome home", he said.
Yet another picture of deserted straw huts and sand dunes appeared, yet, as the wind blew into the room, I knew that it was no picture. I was also slightly aware that my face was starting to sizzle. The dessert wind was scorching hot, and I gladly turned my back to it and face the man. "I don't even know your name." "Don't feel bad," he said, "its not exactly something I yell from the rooftops. But that couldn’t matter less right now. I think what I have to say will interest you much more than my name.” So he began a story, a long story, while I sat. I tried to hide it, but my interest rose with every single word.
“This may seem like a long, contrived bore, but god help you, you’re going to savor every word. Understand?” I did. “Good. The year was 1920. The nations were still reeling from World War 1. The United States government, although victor in this particular conflict, wasn’t very happy with it's handle on world affairs. They wanted to know everything about virtually every nation and it's activities, and if necessary, they wanted to be able to take control of a situation at a moments notice. Of course, this would be no small feat. However, on December first, 1921, the U.S. government created a new espionage-related organization, simply named Project Deca. 50 members of the CIA were assigned to Project Deca, and Dr. J.C. Halsey, a former high-ranking CIA agent, was named the director. Project Deca was given that name because our government felt that, in just ten steps, or maneuvers, they would be on top of the game. These ten steps would allow them to take root in foreign governments and embed themselves in any particular country. They thought they could not only prevent another war, but also gain sovereignty world wide in time. But they found a major flaw in their ten-step-plan put into practice: money. Power is synonymous with money in this world, and Project Deca never did get enough funding to do its job well. So in summer 1924, much to the dismay of its director, Project Deca was absolved and its operatives were forced to resign.
"Dr. Halsey had an interesting life up to that time. He had already been in the military at the start of WW1. In 1915 he left because of extensive injuries. In early 1917 he started working in the White House as the Personal Assistant to the President. In late 1920 he was appointed Assistant Director of the CIA, a very shocking appointment, due to his young age. Shortly afterward he was chosen to be the first director of Project Deca, but by that time he knew that he was on the wrong course. Everything he had done so far in his life he did to make a change. World change. His idealistic goals had taken him from the Army, to the White House, to the CIA, but he knew that he could never bring about change by those or similar means. So he decided to blaze a different trail.
"When Project Deca was disbanded, he was the only one not forced to retire. As a matter of fact, he was offered his former high-ranking position with the CIA, but he knew what he had to do.
"After leaving Washington, Dr. Halsey started to look for other wealthy or influential people that shared his feelings of discontentment about government and world affairs. In January 1925, he met a young congressman named Bernard Dunder, and together they created a new organization called 'No Just Cause', a secret faction bent on world reform.
"The men, along with their few supporters, felt that reform could be brought about by crafty negotiations, with a small threat here or there. As a result, they accomplished nothing. However, they made many friends in very high places, which would lay the groundwork for much greater things to come. Over 15 years later they both met their demise one by one along with their sponsors, after which a new administration stepped in. Now here's where the story gets interesting."
He walked over to the dusty desk and wiped off a small spot, on which spot was printed an image of a computer keyboard. After tapping on it, the large screen slid back into place and displayed a menu. After he made a selection, a picture of a young man appeared on the screen. "This is Thayer Halsey, the son of Dr. Halsey, who became the next director of No Just Cause after his father's demise in 1942."
After tapping a few more times, a new picture came up. "This is me in 1944 at the age of 27, when I became CO-director of N.J.C. I’m the son of Bernard Dunder, and never quite agreed with my father’s role in government as a congressman. I was pretty wise for my age, and I realized that our fathers’ soft-handed approach to world reform was totally impractical. So when Thayer started to take an even more conservative approach, I knew something had to be done. We had a long argument one day, and I explained that we would never make our mark on the world scene unless we were willing to get our hands a little dirty. He thought that our fathers were the wisest men ever, and the way they did it was best. I, of course, couldn't agree with him there. I told him that I would make this organization much like Project Deca, except we would take control of world affairs, and not just monitor them. I made it clear to him that his cooperation, though desirable, was not crucial. I was going to do it at any cost. Well, by the end of it, he pulled rank on me and said I would be removed from my position as CO-director. Unfortunately, he died that night as we were eating dinner together, before he got a chance to carry out his threat." He seemed to give a little smile as he remembered, and the room fell silent for a minute. Then remembering I was sitting there, he snapped back to attetntion and added, "Of natural causes, of course."
I nodded slowly and smiled back. Now would normally be the point in a conversation that I would take my leave with the vigor of an escape convict. But it was pretty clear that such a thing wasn’t possible in this case, so I just slid my seat back a bit as he continued. "At that time I started to change things around here, and by the ‘50s we had hundreds of agents, and we were elbow deep in the political elements of several powerful countries. However, we were still a long way from a worldwide operation, and our agents weren't very well trained, in my opinion. My ideals were good, but I couldn't fulfill them alone.
"Up to that time the organization, No Just Cause, was a monarchy of sorts. That is, the director and co-director were to be determined by family line, males in particular. Thayer and I kept with that tradition, and our children were to do the same. I wasn't very concerned with it, though, since I had no intention of dying.” He inserted a friendly chuckle here, apparently proud of the funny he made. However, since I certainly wouldn’t qualify as a friend, all remained awkwardly silent, and he reluctantly continued. “Anyway, it wasn't until about 16 years after his death that we found out a little secret Thayer was keeping from us all. Seems that he got married late 1930, and then had a baby girl the next year. However, he chose not to tell us about her because he didn't want her to be the next director after his death. But in 1950, at the age of 19, young Janet Marie Halsey contacted me, poking around for information about her father’s shrouded life. Well, we were surprised to say the least. But even then we knew what we would have to do. Since she was a Halsey, she would have to be trained to be the new director. But after we told her about the nature of the organization, her father's term as director, and his untimely death, she sternly refused the position. She said she wanted a better life for herself and her future family than that, and so on and on. She said she wanted nothing to do with it. However, she kept in contact with me, and just a month or two later, she married one of my sons. I’ll admit, my wife and I played matchmakers in that relationship, but I simply could not let her get out of my sight, so to speak. So I managed to rush a marrige between her and my son, which wasn’t easy, for my son was an idiot. Point is, she was to be the next Director, whether she knew it or not.
"Unfortunately, the year’s end found her with a new baby boy. Contrary to my intentions, her new family gave her even more reason to stay separate from N.J.C. However, her husband, my son, who was a rookie agent, insisted she accept the once-in-a-lifetime position of director, so she did. She loved him blindly, and would jump the Grand Canyon with a moped if he asked her with a smile. Her four-year training began mid-March 1951.
"In 1956 when her son began school, she took a more hands-off approach to the position of Director, but it was obvious that she surpassed the previous directors in greatness. She was a great young chemist, and no matter what happened with N.J.C., she never forgot her love of science. She went to Cornell university prior-to and during her training here, and was constantly researching something-or-other. I encouraged her.
"In 1960 she told me that she had discovered a mixture of normally lethal chemicals that, when mixed correctly, became a truth serum of sorts. The person who was injected with it would feel extremely serene, and a short time later would be only half-conscious. At that point one could ask the person any question they liked and the person, still in his sub-conscious state, would give a short answer. After some highly illegal experiments with 47 human subjects, she found that was a consistent result with every subject. She also found that it had to be frozen to be effective. However, with good news, the bad news is never far behind. The bad news was that within an hour, each and every test subject suffered a brain hemorrhage, and 10 minutes later, they would be dead.” At this I jerked a bit in my seat in surprise at the manner he revealed this little piece of information. He must’ve noticed, because he shrugged and explained. “a unpleasant side-effect, naturally, but I wasn’t surprised.” “Naturally,” I agreed, as I realized that the man wasn’t quite ok in the head. I let him go on, keeping this fact in mind. “At first none of us were really concerned if our future targets lived or not. Years later we were able to decrease the risk of the subject suffering permanent harm, so with that prospect we decided to use it on our operations. We code-named it 'Ethium'.
"You see, N.J.C.'s main mission was to collect, steal, even manufacture as much money as possible. Then, we used our money, coupled with commercial and military secrets, to buy friendship and favors from all sorts of influential people, even in government. With the aid of Ethium, we could take a more aggressive approach to our operations, using all forms of coercion, including bribery, blackmail, that sort of thing. We could go from influencing the world to owning it. There was only one problem blocking us from total success: The lack of a truly competent operative. Most of our agents were very poorly trained, and even when we did gather required intelligence, we could never fully utilize it. Things had to change. Now I'd like to, if I may, back-track a bit. This son of young Janet..." When he stopped talking, I looked around, trying to find the reason for his pause. But when I looked back at him, I saw that he was just looking off into space. "What about him?" I asked finally.
With a solemn expression on his face, the old man walked toward the door. He opened it, calling two guards into the office. These men were the first sign of human life I had seen all day, other than the old man, who barely counted. After closing and locking the door, he typed a few numbers on a small keypad on the wall, and then the whole room seemed to move. I looked out the window and saw that either we were moving or the sand was. He motioned for the guards to stand on either side of me. They were heavily armed, large, and each poking my temples with a strange looking gun, but they were clearly reluctant to stand that close to me. As a matter of fact, I swear the one on the left was trembling. After I wondered about that for a few minutes, I felt the room softly slow down and stop, and the man said, “follow me!” The elderly man jerked his head in the direction of the door, and after a prod from one of the guards, I obeyed.
He opened the door to what seemed like an interrogation room: a small, white room with a door on each of the four walls and furnished with only a small card table and two folding chairs. It reminded me of the room chester intived me to join him in, just a few days before. I didn't know what it was, but the sight of that room made me want to run over those two guards and make a break for it. That feeling stayed with me, but I saw how closely the men were looking at me, and I calmed down. Besides, I wanted to know more.
"By the way, it would help if I knew you're name", I said. As it was obvious that I was going to push the point, he finally responded, "If you must, you may call me Ace. Will that make you happy?" I raised my hand, and took his irritated expression as permission to speak. “Ace, are you aware that you have a ridiculous first name?” With an annoyed sigh, he took a seat and continued, not allowing me to distract him from his point. "This first son of young Janet had nothing but problems during the first few years of his life. He was born with a debilitating bone disease, and he broke over twelve bones in the first year of his life. He had an incredibly weak immune system, and thus every little cold left him bed-ridden, sometimes for weeks. To enable Janet to remain Director, her husband, my son, Marcus, began staying home all day every day to take care of the little one. Well, slowly but surely, the boy began to get better. As a matter of fact, at the age of eleven his bones were as strong as steel. He was allowed to go back to school for the first time in years. In school he got nothing but A-pluses for a year straight in every subject, where-as formerly he failed miserably academically. We were all confused and delighted. But it wasn't all good news.
"As time went by, the boy became very strong for his age, which wasn't bad in itself. However, that coupled with the extremely violent temper he developed about the same time made him dangerous, even to his family. He would have spells that resembled seizures, except after these came over him he often became very aggressive and could not be reasoned with until he came back to earth on his own. The icing on the cake became his sudden burst of intelligence. All these qualities put together added a harsh, even sadistic facet to his personality. As a matter of fact, the only good thing in all of this is that he wasn't aware of most of his newfound abilities, except for the short episodes when he was uncontrollable. How he got that way in the first place baffled us all. At least, it did for a time.
"Again, I feel like I must repeat that the boy’s father wasn't too bright. Although a simple blood sample would incriminate me in a court of law, I am convinced that he, especially his brain (or lack thereof), originated from his mother alone. But that's a story for another time." I figured I’d grace Ace with a smile for his efforts on that one, just as the guard on my right gave a girlish giggle, which was going above and beyond in my opinion. Ace raised his hands and grunted, as if trying to calm an overly excited crowd. "One night they invited me and my wife over for dinner. Well, my son, wanting to show me that he wore the pants in the family, stupidly decided to start an argument with his wife, although he normally wouldn't have dared. So at a quiet time during dessert he started.
'Would you like a couple more pieces of cake, Jan?'
You see, after a few decades of marriage you know what to and what not to say. You can also detect a stupid remark from someone else immediately. These are both survival mechanisms built into husbands, without which many husbands would suffer extinction at the hands of their enraged wives, or in this case, someone else’s enraged wife with bad aim. My son had not yet developed either of those skills. The last thing I saw before I hid behind my wife was Janet glaring at him. 'What do you mean 'a couple'? Are you trying to say that I've had enough?'
'Weeeeeeelll...'
She barked at him, 'Well, spit it out! Do you think I'm fat or what?'
'No! No! I didn't say that!' He was running scared. 'I was just thinking about all those freezer pops you keep stocking in the freezer. All that sugar’ll kill your figure. But it's no big deal, really.'
She thought for a moment. 'What freezer pops? I've told you before, the only way I would buy something like that is if you put it on the shopping list, and you haven't done that in at least a year…'
'Yeah? Well, how about all those freezer pops you've been hiding in your lab freezer all this time?' He turned to me after I took my seat once again. 'Janet has had no less than fifty of those things in that little freezer down there at any given time. She has so many that I've been letting Junior have one almost every single day for the last year and a half, and she has never noticed!' With a triumphant grin he turned back to her. 'But nooooo, you just keep stowin' them in there. I'm surprised you've got any figure left at all.'
“Well, Janet, only 5'3” or so, leaped across that table and deposited a few crooked teeth down his windpipe. Fortunately, she was a very coordinated girl, or else I might’ve unintentionally shared my son’s fate. We all thought it was the crack he made about her figure, but apparently it went much deeper than that. Those weren't, in fact, frozen treats at all, and once again, my son had let his stupidity get the best of him.
"Ever since her junior college days, Janet had been investigating a base formula of chemicals that she thought would have many scientific benefits. This formula eventually gave birth to 'Ethium', but that wasn't the end of it. For a time after she discovered Ethium, she still searched for a more practical use for that base formula, but there was one unavoidable fact: The base formula and everything that came from it was highly poisonous. She soon stopped trying, but in the meantime, she would keep large quantities of it in a special freezer she kept in her home lab. She never noticed that some would go missing on a regular basis, as she was using a great many a day on her testing. To make a long story short, the boy’s father had been giving his son a 6-ounce dose of the poisonous mixture every single day for over a year.
"Obviously they no longer gave the child any more doses, but it was clear that his physical and mental problems ended just shortly after he started taking the base formula. No one had an explanation. And sure enough, after he stopped his grades quickly worsened, his physical strength began to diminish, and his temperament slowly improved. In the meantime, Janet set about figuring out why her tests showed the formula to be lethal, while her son took eighteen times that amount every single day and felt no adverse effects. Not long afterward, My son Marcus and Janet decided that, in light of this news, and for several other reasons, they could no longer make their marriage work. So on December 23, 1961, not long after this incident, they made their decision to divorce. Junior was sent to live with the mother of Janet's friend and ex-fellow-scientist. Janet went overseas to finish her research, Marcus went to Vegas to party hearty, and their son was left stuck in the middle. They repeatedly lied to him, and they never told him they were getting divorced. They even told him that they would be back for him, so they could be a family once more, knowing good and well that it was over. That boy never did see his parents again..."
I was still standing, but I could feel my body starting to sway back and forth. I felt sick. I wanted to believe that he was talking about someone else, or lying. But I felt that it was all true. He then walked closer and looked me in the eye for a few seconds. "Just in case you haven't yet figured it out, this is the story of your life I'm reciting. Whether you remember or not, that is all what happened during the first crucial decade of your life. But it gets better..." having regained a portion of my composure, I had to chuckle at that. "It better, you still have four decades to cover. Now I’m not saying I agree with all this, but I must admit, its all very interesting.” I was greatly understating my feelings. It was more than interesting. It felt right, and that’s more than I could say for any of my theories. But it was wildly, extremely…extreme.
Ace went on, ignoring my previous statement. "When your mother announced that she would be quitting her position at N.J.C. and then her subsequent move overseas, I took immediate action. The largest change I made was to change our name to Just Cause, destroying the idea that we could ever realize our goals by cooperating with government in any way. The name No Just Cause denoted outright rebellion against the government. The name Just Cause signified the fact that we were going to do things that any government wished it could do. Another thing was that while your mother was here she wouldn't let me give you doses of the base formula, or develop your abilities. But once she left, we were able to find you and mold you to our liking.
"You see, we found out how you could take large doses of the base formula with no ill effects. It seems your mother, just before she got married, took a dose of Ethium in its early form. It nearly killed her, and traces of it still remained when you were conceived. It entered your system, and you were partially immune to it by the time you were born. More than that, your body became somewhat dependant on it, and all your childhood troubles were in fact severe, prolonged withdrawal symptoms. The use of any illegal drug is an example off how the body can become dependant on something that, in itself, is harmful. When it entered your system again, your body embraced it, but it reaped mostly its benefits. We also found out that your mother’s cousin, who was also her lab assistant, took tiny doses of a similar formula about the same time, and he had a son five years later. We wanted to exploit any abilities his son or you had. The reasoning behind all this was to create a super-agent, in short. Your increased strength, agility, mental ability, and capacity, coupled with your youthful energy and drive, would help you become a formidable opponent for anyone or anything. We could finally put to work the intelligence we gathered up to that time. We had a high hope. We just had to figure out how to make it a reality.
“In June 1962 we maneuvered things so that both you and your cousin, Wilson, were sent to a friends house at the same time. We planned to take you children later, and that’s exactly what we did. We did have a bit of trouble with you, but we got you both in the end. The next day we started testing. We gave you both two-ounce injections of Ethium, then had you complete a long series of puzzles. We were expecting a strong change in your problem solving skills and response time when the injections kicked in. But it never happened. Forty-five minutes later, I was still looking at you two boys through the two-way mirror. Wilson was asleep, and you sat, bored, looking at the puzzles before you. Well, I left for but thirty seconds to get some water. When I came back, you were gone, and according to his heart monitor, Wilson's heart was churning at 114 beats per minute. I ran to the door, but something was propped against the door from the outside. It turned out to be the fire ax from down the hall. The two guards I stationed at the door were sprawled in the hall with tranquilizer darts in their legs. We found you in an air duct twenty minutes later. It took me a while to figure out what happened, and you certainly weren’t going to tell me, but I figured it out. None of us could believe it, but its true. First of all, you apparently had some way of knowing when I left the room, even though the room was sound-proofed and we were using a two-way mirror. I never quite figured that out. Then, using the corner of your puzzle book as a crude tool, you somehow took a small screw out of the wall and, using only that and some sharp pieces of plastic from a cup we gave you, picked the lock. That alone would've been fascinating enough to me, but you didn't stop there. Once you got into the hallway, you took the hand of one of the guards, and without taking the tranquilizer gun from him, you shot the other guard with it; then you made him shoot himself with his own hand. This obviously would’ve taken fantastic speed. Then you detached the cover from one of the air ducts, climbed in, and replaced the cover. All this in just thirty or forty seconds. Then you shimmied through over 100-yards of sixteen-inch square ductwork. You almost made it out of the building, too. That's when I knew that you were the answer to my prayers.
"As for Wilson, he had what is called a quiet seizure. That's when your muscles have spasms in a way that results in very little body movement. If your escape had not have attracted my attention, Wilson would have surely suffered cardiac arrest in a matter of seconds. Either way, it was clear that he was not the boy for the job. We wanted to give him back to his parents, but because of unforeseen circumstances, we had to put him up for adoption. We did, however, find him a VERY wealthy family. Call it an act of charity." A light finally turned on in my head. “Wait, are you talking about Chester?” Ace smiled in satisfaction. “Why yes, although Wilson was his real name. Apparently his adoptive parents didn’t think that sounded rich enough, so they had it changed. We weren’t going to find him a civilian family, until we realized that the large dosage had somehow affected his memory, causing him to forget everything, basically his whole childhood up to that point. So we weren’t concerned with him telling of the day he spent in our facilities. It worked out to our benefit in fact, because years later we were able to develop a different compound that could totally erase one’s memory, without killing them. I have found Ethium to be a versatile formula, especially after we found out how to keep our subjects alive. The normally deadly base formula is what gave you your enhanced abilities, a derivative of it allows us to reach the subconscious mind of a person, and thus extract any information we want. A third form allows us to safely erase one’s memory, and a fourth form of it acts as a strong sedative, which we had to use on you the night after we met at the funeral. You may not realize it, but its Sunday the 16th. You’ve been asleep since last Tuesday.”
12:32pm Sunday, January 16th
I shook my head in disbelief, thinking back to the last thing I could remember from that night. “But wait,” I said finally, sitting in the chair across from him. “You killed Chester?” I assumed the answer was yes, and I was wondering why he killed a man that was going to tell me less than Ace was telling me now. He responded quickly, “No, no, I didn’t kill him. I always contract the less important tasks like that to small-time crooks. It keeps my men freed up for the more important things. Oh, and if you’re wondering, we didn’t do that because of what he told, but because of what he knew. He is no longer in our plans, unlike you. Thus, it simply would not do to have him learn about us.” I swear, if those guards weren’t on me I would’ve jumped that old man. To hear him talk about Chester’s murder like that was just unbelievable, and that further helped me see what kind of man Ace was. He wasn’t trying to hide it though, so I was confused as to what he wanted with me. I asked him, but he didn’t answer my question directly. Instead he pulled a plastic bag out of his breast pocket and laid it on the table. It seemed to have had a lot of metal fragments in it. "Has anything I've said so far rung a bell?” he asked. I shook my head slowly. He nodded at the bag. "How about this?" I shook my head again. He just sighed. “I brought you here in the hopes that this place would jog your memory. After all, you did spend 17 years here.” I stood up, my head feeling like it was about to burst. “To be honest with you, I just want to go home. So if you will…” Ace stood up now. “I wont,” was his blunt response. “I didn’t bring you here just for the fun of it. We have some business to take care of.” One of the guards pushed me back down into the chair, where I stayed. I was upset, but I wasn’t stupid.
Ace continued with his story as if he had a deadline to meet. "We knew you'd have to undergo rigorous training before we could use you in the field. Every morning during the first few years we gave you a small dose of the Ethium base, and thus you never forgot anything, and you learned incredibly fast. There was just one problem: we would have to take a blood sample every morning to determine how much to give you, for it varied often. The dosage depended on factors such as blood pressure, hemoglobin level, even height and weight. We knew that being just one-quarter ounce off might have produced less than optimum results. So after much research, we decided to make a gland that would not only produce the base formula of Ethium, but would also pump a constant supply of it directly into the brain and throughout the body, regulating the flow as needed. Well, it took us eight years to develop and fabricate, but we got it finally.
“The surgery took us 31 hours STRAIGHT. I was there the whole time, and if I didn't know better, I would've sworn that they tried their best to kill you. As a matter of fact, you flat-lined twice. But after it was done, we saw a big difference. We'll talk about that later, though. Anyway, that greatly accelerated your training. You were 21 at the time, and we taught you everything about everything. The good thing about you was that you never needed a demonstration. Some well-worded and brief instructions were all you needed. For instance, we taught you to fly a helicopter, drive a car at high speeds, operate a submersible, hack into the UN's computer network, and everything in between, all without the aid of image or video." He leaned over the table and whispered with obvious glee, "At the tender age of 19, you could fly the Apollo spacecraft out of earth's atmosphere and, in theory, back to earth. Unassisted. You aced NASA’s Apollo 7 simulator module. You were fascinating, and my guess is that, although you may not know it yet, that you still are. That is what I plan to prove today."
At that point Ace picked up the plastic bag and emptied its contents onto the table. “Show me who you are, and you will find who you were.” Then he and the guards simply left the room, closing the door behind them. I looked back to the table, now cluttered with pieces of metal about as big as bottle caps. There were also three marble-sized pellets. I just sat rubbing my head, hoping to massage some ideas from my head. I again wondered, “what do they want with…” But that's as far as I got, because just then a siren shattered my train of thought. A computerized voice said over loudspeakers, "Level 22 security breach detected. Stand by for intrusion response."
The next thing I knew I was staring down at the floor. I'm not talking about looking down at my feet, and it wasn't until Ace walked into the room that I realized something was very strange. When he walked into the room he stood under me, looked up, and said, "Need I say more?" I was hanging from the ceiling. My legs, at a perfect 180-degree angle from each other, were wedged against opposite walls in the small room. Nine feet above the floor. I was also holding a broken-off leg from the table below, gripping it in both hands. I glanced at the table, just now noticing that it had been savagely ripped apart. Without thinking, I let myself fall to the floor. My legs absorbed the impact like a spring, and I slowly stood up. "Well," Ace said, "isn't that fantastic? Say something already!" But I just stood there, and I can imagine the dumb look I most have had on my face. His face fell in frustration. He sighed as he sat down, scowling at me. Meanwhile, I looked up to the high ceiling, imprints of my feet on either wall.
"While you were a teenager, a favorite training simulation we used was held in this room. What we would have you do is assemble a special non-metallic training pistol, which was cut into 23 pieces, and defend all the exits in this room. A very practical simulation, I might add, since we were SURE that the government would discover this compound any day. So we simulated a situation where you were greatly out-numbered and had limited resources. Now, look at what you just did. When you heard the siren you immediately went to work. First you started putting the gun together. Then you shot a hole in three of the four doors in this room. Look." Facing me towards one of the doors, he showed me a neat hole in the middle. It was uniformly at chest-level in each door, smack in the middle. Ace continued, "Seeing as you were out of bullets, you used the gun as a lethal projectile that smashed clean through the fourth door." He then showed me the fourth door, in which there was a large hole. "You then ripped one leg of the table off, JUMPED the nine feet to the ceiling, and were waiting, weapon at the ready, for any further intruders. You would've gotten me if you hadn't have snapped out of it by the time I came in."
He paused for a moment to let me soak it all in. He leaned against the wall patiently as I examined the carnage around me, then started to speak again. “Project Deca was intended to include ten steps, which steps would have gotten the government where it wanted to go. I had higher aspirations however, and when I had brought this organization to that point, I knew I would have to go higher. I had to add another step to the formula. You are that Eleventh step. Out there, you’re just Jack Nolson. But here, you are Project Eleven.”
Well, surprise really isn’t the word for my reaction. "Why don't you just let me think about all this for a while?"
"I'll tell you why." He said, suddenly losing his patience. "You seem to be under the impression that everything you've been told has come because it was owed to you. What you don't seem to realize is that is rarely the case with anyone. The world is just too big a place for anybody, even someone like you, to matter that much. The problem with you was that you always thought to much of yourself..." He gave me a brief glare, then added, "...and its apparent that deep down, you still do. Let me fill you in on a little something: there are more important things going on than you right now. What makes you so special?"
"Good point," I admitted. I wanted specifics; I wanted to know what was going on. "Well, 'Ace', what now? I’ll admit that I’m afraid to ask what your motive is for telling me all this, so I won’t. But you can’t expect me to buy all this stuff unless you tell me everything.”
“Well Jack, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Instead, I’ll just tell you what you need to know. You see, you have something I want. Apparently you don’t remember what it is or even that you have it, but you most definitely have it. What I need to do is unlock your brain, your memories, because only then will you see the importance of giving me what I want. You’re of no use to me in this current state. Now your complete cooperation, though obviously desirable, is not crucial. You say you want to think about it? I suggest you do so very carefully.” Walking toward the door, he added with a distinct air of impatience, “let’s go.”
We walked through the door and back into the very large office. “Gerald!” he bellowed into the corridor. He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “Get the Stealth Hawk 13 on the ready and come get me at the east wing. (Sigh) Yes, it’s the black one. Just make sure you get the right one, we’ll need some speed.” Turning to Gerald, he ordered “watch him while I’m gone. If he tries anything at all, shoot him. In the leg.” He then turned to me. “It looks like you’ll have a while to think about it. I have an important engagement in Washington D.C. that I wouldn’t miss for the world. While I’m gone make yourself at home.”
Just as he said that, a noise like an explosion boomed over our heads. Then the large screen started to retract into the floor, and what looked like a 737 with attitude mixed with a stealth fighter greeted us. The desert heat coupled with the heat emanating from all six of its idling jet engines made for a pretty strong effect. As Ace climbed the stairs leading to the jet, I looked over at “Gerald”. “What now, Gerald?”
Once I looked at him close, I saw that he was the same young, giggling guard that was standing next to me before. I thought I could get something out of him, but he just ignored me. So I went over to the desk to see what I could find out. First I found the button that slid the screen back into place. Easy. Next I found a button that made a smaller monitor slide out of the desk. Cool. I turned my attention back to Gerald.
“Do you know anything about this computer?”
“I’m not allowed to touch that computer”, he whined back at me.
“Well, your boss isn’t here and I say you can touch it, all right?” After a moment of thought, he nodded and practically skipped over. “Well, I’m not supposed to know this, but this computer can access all the security features of the compound and surrounding area.” With a grunt of satisfaction, he brought up a screen showing the contents of the room they were in. “These are all the surveillance cameras in the compound.” I looked. Pressing a button, I was able to look at different rooms. I finally came to a room that contained shelves and shelves of machinery. “What is this room?”
Gerald just stood there in fascination. He finally spoke. “This is the room that none of us are allowed to see or even know about. We don’t even know where it is.” “Well you must have heard something. It looks like weapon storage to me.” I was pumping him for information. I knew he knew something, and if it weren’t for his childish fear, so would I. “Well I have heard things... one of the old-timers told me that thirty or forty years ago, there was a super-agent, just a young guy, that was a genius or something. Not only was he like Super-man in the field, but also he would constantly invent new weapons, shields, and even new building technology. I think he designed this building along with several others, but it seems that with this particular one, he personally contracted the work and hid the blueprints. Thus, J.C. still doesn’t know what all this compound contains. Rooms, some above ground, exist, but they don’t know how to get at them.” He looked around mysteriously.
A super-agent, huh, I thought. “This guy seems to know quite a bit. What else did he tell you?” Thus story-time began. Gerald seemed to forget that I was the man he should be ready to shoot at any second.
“All right, check this out. Seems that in the 60’s this kid started training with J.C. Apparently he had all this natural talent and they thought they could develop it into something even better. And they did. On his first mission he took on seven secret-service men single-handedly. But years later, he ended up meeting a woman on one of his operations, and he fell in love like that. They were going to get married. It was then that he decided that he never wanted to be an agent in the first place. He said that they made him undergo all that training against his will, and he said he was getting out. Well, the boss, or ‘chief’ as we call him, didn’t like that at all. He couldn’t force him, but...”
He stopped and looked off blankly into space. I almost turned the table over. “What happened?!” It was story-time gone bad. “Well,” he whined, “this is all very sensitive information. I mean, for all I know, you could be a CIA agent or some kind of psychopath or something.” “Which is all the more reason why you should tell me everything you know. Now spill it, kid, or else they’ll put you under the jail.” Apparently I was pretty convincing, because Gerald started whimpering.
“No no, I’ll tell you. OK, word has it that when this dude left, he left some little surprises behind. They’re not sure what all he left behind, but they do know that he took all of J.C.’s money, tens of billions of dollars. They suspect that he put the money into hundreds of bank accounts around the world, and then one by one withdrew it and hid it somewhere. Chief said once that he would go to any lengths to get that money back. But once again, he decided not to use force. Instead he wanted to weaken the guy. The only problem was that the guy and his wife hid or went overseas or changed their names or something, so it’s been difficult to find him I guess, just assuming Chief is still looking. Anyway, they apparently haven’t found him yet, but word has it that when they do find him, they’re going to kidnap his wife and do stuff like that to break him down, so that when they do approach him, he’ll be more inclined to cooperate.”
How is that possible, I wondered. I was more relieved than angry, but I found room for both emotions. “Listen to me very closely Gerald. I AM that ‘guy’. Not only do I believe that the story you were told is true, but it has all happened already. My wife disappeared years ago, and it is very possible that this organization was behind it. Now I know there’s hope of finding my wife. But there’s something else,” I added, thinking carefully about my next words “this isn’t right. So I’m going to give you the opportunity to get out alive now. It going to be my responsibility to make sure Just Cause is taken care of. I could use your help. What do you say?”
Both confusion and shock were dancing all over his face. Looking back, I might have given him too much information at once, but there was no time for subtleties. Thus, his stunned silence didn’t help. “Listen, take us to the room where the jets are.” But all he could respond with was “uh, uh, uhhhh...” Finally I was forced to reach into my breast pocket in an intimidating manner and yell “NOW!” That got him moving.
I sat back down in front of the computer screen. “Surprises, huh?” Pressing a button labeled search, I thought about what I might look for. After a long time of searching aimlessly, I was unable to find anything of use. Closing the on-screen search box, I looked at the icons on the screen. They had various names on them, but one of them read: Locked Programs. That caught my attention, and I clicked on it. “Please place left thumb on external security pad” the screen commanded. I obeyed. The scanner slowly scanned my thumbprint, after which another screen came up showing an overhead map of the compound. About twenty little X’s covered the whole area. A button on the side read, “Confirm underground detonation”. I jumped out the chair. “Hey Gerry! We’re blowin’ this joint sky high!” “What?” he said, totally losing it. “You’re really going through with it?”
“Looks that way,” I said. “Is anyone else here?”
“No one’s in the compound,” he responded, “but you should probably know that Chief called in and said that he was less than one hundred miles away.”
“Oh good,” I said, “that’ll give us plenty of time”
“Well...” he started. “What?” I demanded, “How fast is he going?” “About 1,760 feet per second” he said sheepishly. As I tried to figure out how much time that gave me, he added, “Taking into consideration this time we’ve just spent talking, I’d say we have about four minutes.”
I groaned and turned back to the computer. I put in three minutes until detonation and clicked the button, not knowing quite what would happen. A timer came up. “Alright, let get out of here, we only have three minutes!”
“Wait!” Gerald said. Running around the desk he grabbed my hand and pressed my thumb against the drawer. It popped open and he grabbed some things. “Put on this watch,” he told me. An image of the computer screen was shown on the watch face. The timer read 2:42. “We’re running out of time!” I yelled. I grabbed my clothes as we ran out the door and right onto the flight deck. “What’s the fastest jet here?” He pointed to a jet just about the size of Grand Central Station. “It’s a experimental transport jet and I don’t think we should...” “Let’s go!” I had no time for doubt.
The plane was much bigger up close, if that’s possible, but according to my watch, we didn’t have time to quibble. We climbed the stairs to the cockpit and Gerry turned on the lights. A very complicated array of instruments was spread across the cockpit. “Alright Junior, get us out of here.” I said.
“Um...” he mumbled, and I knew bad news was coming. It’s always bad news. “First of all,” he started, “I don’t know how to fly this jet, and second, the only way to exit the flight deck is to retract the roof from the control-room.”
I looked at the timer. 1:48 left. “We have plenty of time,” I said reassuringly, “now where is the control-room?” “Across the compound” was the depressing answer. With a groan I said, “okay, while I find that control room, you need to find a manual for this thing or something. We gotta get out of here.”
I ran off of the flight deck and into the hallway. As I ran down the narrow hall, I felt a slight hum below me, and it was getting louder. I had to ignore it, as I was currently occupied looking for the control-room. But the compound was bigger than I thought. It seemed to take forever, but I finally found it. As I opened the large steel door, a wall of buttons and switches spread in front of me. After looking for a while I finally found the lever that retracted the roof over the flight deck. Then I looked at my timer. 0:00. I started wondering if there had been a malfunction somewhere, but a moment later an explosion answered my question. I hit the floor just as a huge ball of fire came barreling into the room. After waiting a moment, I ran into the charred hallway. I didn’t know which way to go until I heard the sound of jet engines starting up. All right, I thought, now I just have to get there. I ran towards the sound just as another bomb went off just behind me, sending a huge fireball right into me. But I got right back up. I felt like I had just rolled around in a hot skillet, but I ignored the cries for mercy my skin was screaming. I ran, that’s really all I can say. I ran as fast as I could, and finally I got to the flight deck, where the jet was impatiently hovering. I jumped into the cockpit, and with a push of a button we were off.
I woke up to Gerald putting a wet cloth on my forehead. I sat up with a jerk. “What happened?” I blurted out, tossing the rag to the side. “Did it go off alright?” He never answered me, but he just gave me a ‘you poor, brave, ignorant soul’ look, which upset me. The last time I got a look like that is when I admitted to a group of people that I didn’t know who Bill Gates was. Even after I told them that I didn’t keep up with Country-Western music, they just laughed. Some people are so strange.
“Well...yes,” Gerald finally answered, “yes it did.” He continued staring at me. “Well what’s wrong then?” I demanded. But instead of giving me a simple answer, which is what I was hoping for, he gave me a small mirror. As I looked through it, a dark, charred man looked back. He looked as if he had bitten by a hundred bees all over his body, and shortly thereafter made the acquaintance of a very hostile blowtorch. Just as I was about to ask the age-old question, “what happened”, I admitted to myself that I did, in fact, know well what happened. After all, I was there. Well, I was pretty upset. I must have been, because I was seeing red. Literally. Everything was red, which brought me to the conclusion that my eyes were burned as well. I was probably doing good to have any eyesight whatsoever. I lowered my head.
“Pretty nasty, huh?” I tried to sound sarcastic, but we both knew that it was the truth. But Gerald suddenly perked up. “I know this may not be the best time to say this...“ (well, don’t say it then, I thought) “but that was the absolute coolest thing I have ever seen.” “Yea,” I agreed, but then asked, “what was?” That’s when he started the fidget-fest, apparently a product of his excitement, and he started to explain. “Well, first of all, I saw from the flight deck when the when the first bomb went off...” At this he made an emphatic, sweeping, upward motion with his hands. “...After it did, this huge fireball came blasting through the corridor of the compound! I could see it because every window it passed exploded into a million pieces...” Yet another descriptive gesture narrowly missed my face. “...But then there was another explosion, and it made a fireball even bigger than the last one! It was quiet for a couple seconds, but just then a big chunk of the side of the building came off, and there you were holding it! You were just like the Incredible Hulk, except you weren’t green, huge, or lacking in dental hygiene or fashion sense…” Here he seemed to crack himself up. After he composed himself he continued, “I guess the only bad part was that you were on fire and all. You were the Olympic flame in human form! I doubted whether or not you were going to make it, but you did! That courtyard is almost one hundred yards long, but boy, you were running! You almost torched the inside of the jet, but I guess we should just be glad you’re alive, don’t you think? Sir?”
I was listening, but I couldn’t answer. A feeling came over me all of the sudden, a feeling I don’t think I’ve ever felt before. Actually, it was more like an instinct than a mere feeling. For instance, if you see that a person is about to hit you, your instinct would be to shield yourself or dodge the blow. Well, this was similar, it felt voluntary, like I sub-consciously intended to make my body respond that way, but happened by itself. My head felt like it was suddenly filled with steaming hot lava, but then it surged through my veins, to every part of my body. I could feel it move, but my heart was beating slower and slower. The way I viewed it was that even if this reaction was a sign that something was very wrong, I figured that there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe my time was up. Thus, after coming to this conclusion, I told Gerald I was fine and asked if he had anything better to do. He began whining in response to my admittedly sharp remark, but I was determined not to listen. My intention was to simply wait out this discomfort, what I assumed to be my body’s adverse reaction to the injuries I suffered, and I wasn’t surprised when it got worse. As time passed, my head got lighter and lighter, my heartbeat continued to get slower, and my body became completely numb. I got very dizzy, I got cold, and my skin crawled as a lava hot gel-like liquid rushed through my veins.
Then, all of the sudden, it stopped. As I gained full control of my muscles once more, I lifted my head very slowly. I noticed that my eyesight was back to normal. But even though I had surely been sitting there absolutely still for what seemed like a painfully long series of minutes, all I heard when I came to was “but I don’t think you should be giving me that attitude.” As a matter of fact, Gerald was just then walking away from me.
I couldn’t help myself. “You’re still talking about that? Give it a rest already!” But he shot back, “STILL talking? Only ten seconds ago you were all like, ‘don’t you have anything better to do?’” Well, when I heard that, I realized that I was either in a very long and realistic dream or the twilight zone itself. I would have been more than content to ignore the strangeness of the matter. But Gerald found something that would disturb me even more.
As he turned back to me to continue his verbal assault, Gerald stopped in his tracks. He gave a little yell of astonishment and said, “you look...you look...well, great!” I gave him a wary stare as I slowly walked over to where he laid the hand mirror, never taking my eyes from his. As I lifted the mirror to my face, I stood in shock. My burns were completely gone, and my face was near…well, perfect. As a matter of fact... “What the…” I mumbled, because under further inspection, the person wasn’t even me. Well, it was obviously me, but it was missing definite details. For instance, the wrinkles, laugh lines, every facial imperfection I had gotten so used to over the years, were gone. Oh yeah, and my eyes were a deep, blood red color through and through, no pupil. At least, they looked red to me, though I could see the rest of the room in full color. I decided to ask Gerald, but his nervous expression was enough answer for me. As I lifted the mirror to my face once more, I whispered, “Amazing.” Gerald just shook his head and uttered a statement that really got to me. He simply said, “Wow. Project Eleven.”
I must have been looking in that mirror for 5 minutes, thinking about not only what I saw, but what I was. But the fact that we were in an experimental jet traveling thousands of feet per second brought me back to earth.
“Where are we?” I asked. “About 5 minutes from Massachusetts.” was the answer. He added, “We’ll need to figure out a place to land this monster.” Still staring into the mirror, I asked, “where would you suggest?”
He thought for a moment. “Probably some unused field in Pennsylvania or someplace like that would be best.”
I tore myself away from the mirror just long enough to look at a satellite picture of the area that was displayed on a large screen on the wall. Pointing to a gray spot on the screen, I said, “land right there.”
“We can’t land there,” Gerald retorted, “that’s the John F. Kennedy airport! You just don’t land the stinkin’ starship enterprise in the middle of an international airport in New York! It’s just not done!”
“Watch and learn,” I said with a smirk. Rifling through my pile of clothes for my wallet, I found it and took out a small card with some phone numbers written on it. Having worked at the airport in question, I knew the number to the inside line at the control tower there. With a few taps with my finger I was talking to the tower.
“Yes, air traffic control? This is agent Nolson of the FBI. We have a critical situation up here. We are flying a confiscated jet from Africa and we need FULL runway clearance. As of this moment absolutely NO aircraft of any kind may be allowed onto any of the runways. Any aircraft that are currently on any of the runways cannot be moved. You have five minutes to evacuate the terminals, runways, control tower, every square inch of the premises. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to see a hint of intelligent life, including the police, within seven miles of this jet, except the security guards, who are to secure the perimeter, and at most three persons in the tower to ensure that no one tries to land here, is that understood? Next, I want you to get in touch with the FBI any way you can, telling them to send an agent assigned to ‘Project Deca’. He’ll be the only one allowed in. You have five minutes.”
Gerald looked like a little boy that had just been told on, and his look of horror surprised me. I wasn’t worried; I can be very resourceful when I want to be. “Trust me.” I said, attempting to reassure him. It didn’t work.
“Have you lost your mind?” he yelled. “Do you actually think for a minute that you can get away with that? You must be crazy! They’ll sentence us as spies! We’ll be charged for sedition! They’ll behead us! What were you thinking?” “Trust me,” I repeated, refusing to yield. Although I wasn’t as confident as I made myself look, I was learning that things were often not what they seemed, and that I was capable of much more than I thought. I knew that it was do or die. There was no turning back. I knew that we would probably get caught, but that was a risk I had to take. My past seemed to have caught up with me, and now I had to deal with it. I was scared to death, but I wasn’t going to let it show. After a few minutes Gerald said, “We’re here! Whatever you’re planning to do, you’d better get ready to do it.”
As I looked out the window a saw the vast, empty runway stretched out before us. There was a long line of cars leading away from the airport, and I could see security guards pacing back and forth across the large property. So far so good, I thought. As the jet made a perfect vertical landing, obviously without Gerald’s interference, I thought of a serious flaw in my plan. “We need I.D.’s!” I observed in a hurried tone. Gerald stood there thinking, but after a moment he snapped to attention. Taking out a briefcase he got from the compound, he opened it, revealing a laptop computer. With a push of a button my picture came onto the screen, and with another few taps on the keyboard the machine started to hum softly. “This computer can make I.D.’s and badges for any occupation, from male nurse to secret-serviceman,” Gerald said proudly, as if he had given birth to it. As he spoke, a steaming hot, freshly laminated FBI badge came sliding out of a slot on the side of the computer. “Here you go Agent Nolson,” he said, giving me the badge. Then he quickly asked, “Nolson isn’t your real name, is it?” I told him it wasn’t, not wanting to deal with another of his panic attacks. Ready to go, I thought, as a security guard came up to the jet. I opened the door. “Touch this jet and I’ll have your job!” I yelled, afterward giving Gerald a happy smile.
A half hour later a black limousine pulled right onto the runway. It’s now or never, I thought. I commanded Gerald to make himself look more like a guard, threw on a pair of sunglasses to hide my inhuman eyes, and we walked out of the jet slowly toward the car. Just as I was prepared to flash my badge and say whatever I intended to say, the big, burly driver got out and said flatly, “get in.” Not being one to argue, I obeyed. An older man was waiting for us inside, an irritated look on his face. “What’s the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Well, uh, um...” was all I could say. I was caught off guard. He continued, “You should be glad I intercepted the call you authorized. It was immediately evident that you weren’t who you said you were.” Then all of the sudden he got very solemn and leaned forward. “How do you know about Project Deca? Who are you?” I glanced at Gerald, who gave me his signature blank look. “Well,” I begun, “I’m Project Eleven.” I could hear Gerald slap his forehead at that, and then he tugged at my sleeve, probably trying to stop me from incriminating us further.
The man gave me another irritated look and shifted in his seat. “Now don’t play with me, boy. This is a very serious matter indeed. Now, in what way were you associated with Project Deca?”
I asked him, “Are you aware that after Project Deca was disbanded, the former director of the operation started a new secret organization opposed to the government?” Just as Gerald gave a faint whimper, the man opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. After pausing for a few seconds, he finally asked, “What about it?” “Well, they had an experiment, a theory, by which they could create a super-human of sorts. I am the end result of that experiment, and I need your help to take them down once and for all. What do you say?”
He scrutinized me for a moment. “You’re The Agent? You know, after all this time, seeing as you are still alive, I can confidently say that you are the most wanted person on earth.” He paused for another moment. “So the question now is, why are you here, now? You know that I’ll have to take you in.”
“Well, normally that would be the case,” I admitted, “but I think you can make an exception this time. You see, I believe I have the knowledge and ability to help take down the whole organization. Perhaps. I ask very little of you though. So, either you can chose to be against me and continue to try to do me in, or you can cooperate just for today, and then do what you like. It’s your choice.”
I felt my courage build as he thought for a moment. “I’ll make you a deal.” He opened up a map of the city. “Look here. Do you see this spot right here right next to the bridge? That’s pier 17. On that pier there is an old abandoned warehouse. Go inside that building, and right in the middle of the floor there will be a small card that will enable you to find me. If you make it to me in one piece, I’ll consider your offer. Now get out of my limo.”
As we walked toward the airport terminal, Gerald spoke up. “What do you think he meant by ‘if you make it to me in one piece’?” “Who knows?” I answered. “Who cares? Feds always try to make themselves seem superior. Don’t you watch television?” He looked at me with a confused expression. “Relax,” I said to him, “why don’t you get us a car, huh?” He still looked confused. “Do you mean rent a car or call a cab?” After thinking a moment, I decided on neither. Instead, we walked next door to a hotel that had valet parking. Walking to the lot in back I found that the valet, along with the rest of the hotel, had been evacuated. So I found a late-model sports car that caught my fancy, found the keys in the little valet hut, and told Gerald to get in. He refused. “This is sooo against the law,” he pointed out. “Maybe for you, yes,” I observed, “but I am Agent Nolson of the FBI.” I added, flashing my badge, “I AM the law.”
As we pulled up to pier 17 a while later, I stopped short. The all-too-familiar feeling of impending doom washed over me. The building was standing there, tall and intimidating. There was not a person to be seen, and common sense told me to forget the whole thing, but I refused. I had come too far to yield to some intangible feeling of doom, even though NONE of this would have happened if I had listened to that feeling in the first place. After telling Gerald to stay in the car, I began the walk to the old abandoned warehouse. I was quite sure that going in there was a bad idea, but I never was known for my good sense. So I began thinking about how funny life is. Thinking back I realized that one sip of leftover soda got me into this mess. I sighed and decided not to think about it, but instead looked at the sun setting over Manhattan. The light bounced off the glassed tops of the skyscrapers, and for a moment the crazy city looked peaceful. The last thing I thought before I went into the building was ‘wouldn’t it be a pity if I never get to see that sight again?’
The inside of the building was pitch black and very creepy, and I walked slowly to the center of the room. As I did, though, that familiar liquid started swimming in my head yet again. However, this time I didn’t get dizzy or feel any ill effects at all. Instead, I could feel my senses heighten. I could see nothing, but I was well aware of the fact that I was not alone in the building. I first smelled the rubber of a combat boot sole. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. After a moment I faintly smelled the cleaning fluid used on the inside of rifle barrels. I heard the slow, shallow breathing belonging to a mouth covered by a gas mask. A moment later I heard exactly 21 heartbeats, all muffled by bulletproof vests and nylon jackets. I even felt the breath of one person, figuring that he was about 18 feet away. I was taking all this in when I stopped suddenly. I bent over and picked a card off the floor.
Just then one solitary light bulb turned on right over my head, illuminating 21 heavily armed members of the SWAT team staring at me, weapons aimed. I wasn’t scared though, because I knew what to do. The idea that popped into my head quite by itself seemed crazy to me, but I had to try.
“take any weapons you have and put them on the ground!” one of the men yelled at me. I was able to keep my cool, because I knew that was the only way I was getting out of there alive. “Does it really take all this to arrest one guy?” I asked in a calm voice. In the ensuing moment of silence I listened very carefully and found what I was looking for. The fastest heartbeat, the heaviest breathing belonged to a young man of about 25 years standing to my side. And much to my delight, I heard the small piece of metal that served as the trigger rubbing back and forth on the inside of the rifle he was holding, as a young, fearful hand trembled on the trigger. And he was just my size, too. With a smile on my face, I slowly turned toward the young officer. “You have three seconds to put your hands in the air!” one of the men screamed. I took a quick breath, and then made myself do it. Looking straight at my target, I grabbed the card I was holding with both hands like a gun and raised it as quickly as I could. A sole shot rang out as the inexperienced young man panicked and pulled the trigger. It seemed that time almost stood still for a moment as the bullet came toward my chest. When it was about a foot away from me, I raised my arm in front of me to meet the bullet with the side of my hand. I gritted my teeth as it slowly bore through my flesh. As it hit bone, a metallic clunk could be heard. It then bounced off and went toward the ceiling. As it struck the single light bulb on the ceiling 20 feet above, the room plunged into darkness, and I went to work.
12 seconds later, after a great deal of scuffling and yelling in the dark, a large overhead door swung open and light from the setting sun came into the room. 21 confused members of the New York City SWAT team looked for their felon. But he was nowhere to be found.
As the team walked away, one member yelled, “hey Jones, its kind of dark for sunglasses, don’t you think?” But “Jones” just waved his hand and went walking in the other direction. It wasn’t until a half hour had passed that they realized that Jones was closed in a crate in the warehouse.
“hey,” Gerald said as I walked up to the car, “why are you dressed in a SWAT uniform?” “I’ll tell you later,” I responded, wearing the uniform and a smile.
I looked at the card I picked off the warehouse floor. It was from a big fancy hotel not far away. I headed towards the hotel as I marveled that the guy kept his end of the deal, even though he tried to get me killed. As we pulled up to the hotel, I told Gerald to get in the driver seat and to keep the car running. I told him, “If I come out of there in a hurry, I’ll need you to get us out in a hurry.” I’ll admit it; I didn’t trust the guy I was about to meet for the second time. I had no reason to trust him, and besides, he was the one who sent the swat team after me. I think I was totally within my rights not to trust him.
When I reached the door I paused. Up to that time I hadn’t considered that I had a choice in all this, but suddenly it became clear. I could’ve gone home right then. I could have at least attempted to live life normally, much like I did before this whole mess started. After a few moments of thought, I decided to go in. I didn’t know if another SWAT team was behind those doors or what, but I had to find out. Do or die. ‘Normal life’ was no longer in my vocabulary.
I opened the door to the hotel, looking left and right inconspicuously. Then I saw him. The agent was dressed down a bit, but still in formal attire. He was pacing back and forth in the lounge, and he was talking on his cell phone. I approached him, but it wasn’t until I got closer that I saw the disturbed expression on his face. I sat down in front of him. “I thought we had a deal.” He didn’t miss a beat as he responded, “you foolishly expected honesty, and I expected you to be dead right now. So I guess we’re both disappointed.” I leaned back into the chair, then said, “I’m sorry your attempt failed.”
He shifted in his seat, but didn’t recognize the statement. Instead, without looking up, he said, “At seventeen hundred hours today, an unidentified tactical vehicle entered the Pentagon with forged clearance, ran right through the southeast wall, and, by undisclosed means, overpowered all on the premises. And do you know why they were able to penetrate the defenses of the Pentagon, the center of this country’s protection, with little effort?” Since he apparently wanted an answer, I said, “Maybe they knew the magic words.” He didn’t appreciate the remark, but I didn’t see how the Pentagon’s dilemma had anything to do with the attempt made on my life. He continued, “It’s my job, in part, to secure the Pentagon. You knew this, and as a distraction, you landed a jet in the city, then made sure I was called to the scene, and lastly arranged to meet me under the pretense of helping me take Just Cause down. You then took that opportunity to send your partners to work. You didn’t count on me catching on so quick, did you?”
I sat there stunned, not believing what I was hearing. I had realized that the Pentagon’s invasion was indeed the doing of Just Cause, the “important engagement” Ace spoke of. Between that and the fact that I was being blamed for it, I was pretty upset, for obvious reasons. I was going to debate with him on the matter, but then I froze, not out of fear, however. I didn’t hear anything, but I felt something. When the Ethium started flowing faster through my head, I knew something was going on. I felt nothing else at first, but soon, I could actually feel the floor vibrate. I had to concentrate. So I cleared my mind of every single thought and concentrated. Several seconds passed, but I heard nothing. Suddenly, my senses heightened dramatically, and I started hearing everything better. I heard more and more until I finally heard the sound that disturbed me in the first place. It was the deep sound of footsteps. The deep sound of around twenty or more pairs of feet. They were getting closer. And I knew the humans wearing them were headed for me. But my tactically trained brain came through for me again. I can’t take credit for the idea, but I think I executed it quite well.
I closed my eyes for a moment and let my mind tell me how far away the feet were exactly. Then, realizing that I had time, I started.
Jumping to my feet, I grabbed the jacket of the egotistical guy in front of me and jerked at it until I was looking him in the eye. “So, you figured me out, eh?” I asked menacingly. Then, looking remorse, I gently let go of his lapel. I very slowly straightened his tie and brushed his jacket off. “Can I just tell you one thing?”, I asked in an ashamed tone. “Of course, quickly now.” he said smugly. I leaned in close to him and couldn’t help grinning. “You weren’t paying attention.” A little confused, he started to stand up, but it was too late. The large doors swung open as almost two dozen members of law enforcement, the NYPD this time, flooded into the room. With my mind moving like greased lightning, I was the first to speak. “Well, arrest him!” I commanded. I was, after all, dressed very well, much better than the agent. But as they lunged for him, he put his hands in the air and yelled, “wait, wait! I’m agent Richard Young of the FBI! I sent for you! This man is a terrorist!” They looked uncertain, probably because Agent Young was looking pretty frustrated, even violent, and could easy had been taken for a terrorist himself. But I enjoyed seeing him squirm.
He gave the policemen a this-is-ridiculous kind of look. “If you don’t believe me, check my breast pocket and get my billfold. Well, do it!” All the time he gave me a steady glare, just daring me to try something during his time of embarrassment. The police officer, after checking Agent Young’s pocket, jumped back and pulled his gun. “the pockets are empty, now I’m going to ask you to put your hands behind your head!” But the agent wasn’t listening. “Nonsense, of course it’s in there! What is this anyway?” “I said put your hands behind your head! Now!” But Federal Agents aren’t known for their subordination to anyone, and he ignored the command as he reached in his breast pocket for himself. “Now wait just a minute...” he started, but that same moment a shot rang out and the agent, clutching his arm, fell to the floor. The policeman looked at me uncertainly, gun still raised, so I showed him my own forged FBI I.D. After motioning for the men to stay back, I kneeled down over the body of Agent Young. He was feeling the pain, but it wasn’t a bad wound at all. So I dug in my pocket and pulled out two wallets. “Now one of these are mine,” I said with confusion, “whose do you think the other one is?” I put a solemn face on. “You should have been paying attention,” I informed him. “I don’t know if I even believe this Project Eleven business completely. But if it’s true, you're in way over your head.”
The agent still had something to say. He was obviously in pain, but he found time to say, “I think you have that backwards; you’re in way over your head. You shouldn’t be too pleased right now, this is just the tip of the iceberg.” Here he stopped a moment to pull himself up a bit. His final sentence to me was “you have no idea how big this is.”
I could barely believe what I was hearing. Hearing that phrase again caught me off guard, and I felt like I was talking to Daniel all over again. I was not, however, going to let this man get the last word. He chose to be my enemy rather than an ally, and I knew of only one way to respond to that. So I said, “I will handle the situation, whatever its size and shape. In the meantime, just in case you ever want to continue this conversation, take this…” I pulled his gun out of my pocket and dropped it on his chest. “…You’ll need it.” He responded by trying to swing a punch at me, but I easily leaned out of his reach. “tut, tut, tut,” I scolded, wagging a finger at him. So that’s the way you want to play, I thought. I then stood up, turned toward the crowd of policemen, and yelled, “He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun!” And as I walked towards the door, I smiled at the happy sound of a dog-pile being formed on the foolish man.
I came out of the hotel feeling quite smug, but that feeling soon faded. So far, everybody had been playing small-ball with me, at least that was the way it was starting to seem. I hadn't won anything. I figured at best I was just to making everyone madder. In mid-thought I turned the corner, only to find that that both the car and Gerald were missing. I just shook my head, assuming that he had gotten scared and took off without me. I didn't hold it against him though. I was just a little mad that I had to walk, but walk I did. I soon decided that I would go to Allen’s house. He was rarely home and had a huge house in Brooklyn heights, a swimming pool, and a plasma screen TV. And I had his extra key. So with that worry out of the way, I switched my thoughts to the previous events with the FBI. I was also wondering why I seemed to get away scoot-free with my escape from and destruction of the compound there in Africa. it was obviously a very sinister situation, at least from my point of view, and I knew it would come to a head. Just then I heard a ringing, and at first I thought it was just in my ear. I turned around quickly, only to find that it was a pay phone a few feet ahead of me. I strolled up to it, wondering whether or not I should answer it. On the eighth ring I decided to.
"Hello?" I said slowly into the phone. "Hello Jackie boy, how are you doing? I’ve noticed that you've had some difficulty since you left the compound. Of course, when I say left, I mean utterly destroy. Anyway, how are you doing so far?"
"Just fine, thank you", I said, trying to match the calmness in his voice. However, I was anything but calm as he continued. "I’d take it that your recent sign of aggression was an indication that you are not yet willing to cooperate." "You’d be correct," I started, but then added, "you never really told me what you wanted. All this drama could be unnecessary." Ace chuckled. “Why couldn’t you think about that BEFORE you blew up my compound? Not that I mind, it was actually more yours than mine, I hated the place.” I interrupted him, his calm attitude getting to me. “listen, let’s end this now, if you want something, tell me.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. “you really don’t know, do you? That’s unbelievable.” More silence followed. ”Would you believe me if I said I wanted money?” he finally asked. “You took quite a bit of money from me you know.”
That was Gerald’s opinion of what they wanted, but it didn’t make sense. I wanted to believe it, however, so I did. “Yes, that sounds like it would be your chief concern. Not like you don’t have plenty, I’m sure.” Ace gave a loud laugh into the phone, and I couldn’t determine if he was laughing at the situation or me. He started talking before I came to a conclusion, “As far as my financial situation is concerned, that is my business alone. I really don’t have time to play guessing games, so when you figure it out, let me know. Opposing me would be foolish, you can’t allay the inevitable.”
“I can try.” I managed to keep my voice fairly calm, but as darkness descended on the streets of New York, I again wondered what I got myself into. There was a sigh on the other end of the line. “I was truly hoping we could settle this like gentlemen, but I now see that I will once again have to take the role of the ‘bad-guy’.” Another sigh came from the receiver, followed by a long pause. “To be honest, I saw this coming, so days ago I put things into motion that would make you ‘see the light’. I hope that after tonight, you will see the seriousness of this situation. I’ll be in touch.” And then he hung up. I still didn’t know what I had gotten myself into, but I had been given another glimpse of how bad it would get. However, I would only have to wait until that night to see the whole picture.
5:42pm Sunday evening, January 16th
I continued my hike to Allen’s house, seeing everything a little differently. It was clear to me that Ace was lying to me over the phone. I just could not see how he would put this much importance on any amount of money. I figured that his pride would keep him from pursuing it any further, if nothing else. No, there was something else that he wanted, something that he could put no price on. Something he needed my willing cooperation to obtain. But one thing was for sure: whatever it was, I had it. That is, I had it at one point. But surely, if it were that important to him, he would know whether it was currently in my possession or not. Surely. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk for a moment, thinking about anything I had that Ace might have wanted. But I drew a blank. Also, my stillness had brought to my attention how cold the evening had become, and even though I was looking quite elegant in my tuxedo, it wasn’t very warm at all. I looked up to the top of a nearby building which had a large digital clock on the roof, trying to figure out how much sleep I could fit in that night. But since I damaged my eyes I hadn’t dared to take my shades off, since I didn’t want to scare any passers-by. Thus, walking down the sidewalk after dark without breaking my neck was an achievement in itself, and I didn’t really expect to be able to tell the time.
The closer I got to Allen’s house, the more I was looking forward to the nice, warm bed in the nice, warm spare room. I really wanted to go home, but I didn’t because I initially assumed that Ace was going to use force to get whatever it was that he wanted, in which case home was the last place I wanted to be. Besides, I never expected to destroy his multi-billion dollar compound and steal his experimental jet and get away with it completely. But I was coming to the realization that even all that was nothing compared to what Ace was really after.
When I finally got near to the house, I noticed that all the lights were on, indicating that someone was home. Oh no, I thought, Allen will never let me get to sleep. Allen, despite being the nicest guy you would ever meet, is very talkative, sometimes to the extreme. I new that on this of all nights I would be in no mood for chitchat. But of course, since this wasn’t my house, I wasn’t going to complain. So, resigned to my fate, I continued walking up to the door, until I noticed something else. There were many more cars on the street than usual, some of which were double-parked. I didn’t know if I should assume something was wrong and go on up, or assume that he was having a party, and find somewhere else to go. But since I didn’t have anywhere else to go, I went on up.
“Yes?” the young woman said when I rang the bell. Knowing that Allen both lived alone and was practically incapable of attracting beautiful women, that is, women with all their teeth, I had to sneak a glance at the address. Then, turning back to her, I said, “I’m Jack Nolson, a friend of Allen’s.” she just stood aside and motioned for me to come in, which I did. I was greeted by an intimidating sight of rather large, aging women bustling around with food, flowers, or brooms in their hands. I wasn’t really willing to go any farther into the room, but a nudge from the young woman still standing behind me put me in the middle of the fray. No one noticed me however, although I felt as if I were in danger nonetheless. I started to creep towards the door, but the woman who let me in turned me around and directed me towards the couch. “I’m Allen’s daughter!” she yelled over the talking women. I didn’t hear her, as I feared for my life at that particular moment. All of the twenty or thirty women in the house were going much faster than any human should, and the girl was pushing me through the traffic as if it were no big deal. I, on the other hand, felt like a three-legged dog trying to cross the interstate. “what did you say?”, I yelled back after just narrowly missing an eighteen-wheeler with a vase in its hand. The young woman waited until we reached the couch safely to repeat herself. “I’m Allen's daughter.”
I almost lurched right off the couch. “I didn’t know that Allen had a daughter.” After thinking for a moment, I realized that his family rarely came up in conversation, much like mine. But before I could tell her that, she said suddenly, ‘you haven’t heard, have you?’ Now, in my experience, people rarely preface GOOD news with, ‘you haven’t heard?’ No one ever says, “You haven’t heard? They’ve just come out with cheesecake-flavored Fruit Loops, and they’re good for you, too!” No, in my experience, ‘ you haven’t heard’ often comes just before BAD news, which was true in this case.
A few minutes later I was sitting on the couch next to a very elderly woman whom I found out was Allen’s mother. She was a wreck, but it was a great relief to her that her son had ‘such a great friend that stood by him’. While all this couldn’t have happened at a worse time, as she held my hand and just looked at me with tears in her eyes, I simply concentrated on being as comforting as possible. “How did it happen?” I quietly asked Penny, whom I had earlier found out was the product of a past marriage that Allen probably told me about years ago.
“Well,” she started, “we don’t know.” I waited for her to continue, but she just shrugged and looked at me. “The FBI got involved, and they told us very little. But they just called not long ago and told us that a report would be on the six-O’clock news tonight.” She looked up at the clock. “That’s any minute now.” Penny, Allen’s mother and I all sat on the couch expectantly as the news came on, while the rest of the women stood around us like sentinels that were protecting the royal family. Whatever the posture, we were all waiting anxiously for the segment concerning Allen’s death. I turned the television up when it came. The newscaster began:
“Now we turn to the story that has been shrouded in quite a bit of mystery. Late Tuesday evening on January 11th, a local man by the name of Allen Stewart met with an untimely demise while leaving an NBA game in the city. However, because of heavy FBI involvement in this case, local authorities have been unable to shed any light on the peculiar nature off this incident. In just a few minutes, we will be getting a live video feed from the New York Police Department, where a FBI representative will be addressing the press on the subject. Wait,… I understand that the conference has just begun. We now take you to that press conference.” We were all riveted to the TV set as a suited man stepped up to the podium and started to speak.
“Good evening. At 11:27pm last Tuesday, an unidentified male was making his way through the parking garage of Madison Square Garden when he approached Allen Stewart, who was just leaving the stadium. According to witnesses, the man demanded to be driven to an unknown destination; however, we suspect that Mr. Stewart simply refused to comply with the stranger’s demand. Because of his daring response, Allen Stewart was struck down by a single bullet fired from the criminal’s small handgun. He died minutes later on the way to the hospital.”
Silence descended over the room. A heavy silence that was only broken by the slow sobs of Allen’s mother, who was leaning against me. None of us could have been prepared to find out that not only was Allen murdered, but also that he was caught in a situation that could have happened any day, anywhere, to anyone. To worse people, heartless people, people that didn’t have as many loved ones to leave behind. But it didn’t happen to just anyone. It happened to Allen, one of the kindest, most charitable people I have ever met, even to this day. If all of this upset me that much, I could only imagine how Allen’s mother, now audibly weeping, and his daughter, who sat silent, felt. As Mrs. Stewart wiped her eyes on my lapel, I noticed that the anchorman on the television screen was talking once again. “They have identified the suspect and we will now post his information on the screen so our any watching can identify him if they see him.”
As they started to describe the man, a picture appeared on the screen. My mouth dropped open as I sat looking at myself. The man in the picture had more wrinkles and an overall worse complexion than I, but it was most definitely me. More specifically, it was a picture of what I looked like that morning, before my little accident. And then I remembered what Ace had said less than an hour before: ‘…I put things into motion that would make you see the light.’ Well, I don’t know how he did it, but he got me good. Just then a sudden scream jolted me. Penny for the first time showed emotion, jumping off the couch and pointing at me with a shaky finger. I gave her a pleading look, but I didn’t expect her or anyone else to believe any story of mine. I turned to Mrs. Stewart. The tears were still rolling down her cheeks, but her face now held a confused expression. So I didn’t even try to explain myself as the horde of females slowly figured out what was going on. All of what was happening to these people was my fault completely. First their son was murdered, and now they have his cold-blooded assassin right in their midst. Mrs. Stewart, her only child dead, will have the greatest weight of all to bear. And what made me feel the worst about it all was the fact that we had grown so close in those few minutes that she had actually called me ‘son’. No, I had caused them enough trouble. All I wanted to do was back slowly out the door and hopefully allow them to get past this ordeal, but it didn’t quite turn out that way.
As I started towards the door, the largest of the women uttered a terrifying roar that would make Tarzan jealous. I shocked me for a moment, until a deep voice said, “what is it, mama?” I turned to see a seven-foot tall orangutan-like man, with tight jeans, cowboy boots, and a Hawaiian shirt standing in the doorway. It was quite a sight to see, but I didn’t have time to enjoy it, because the woman started to scream something I didn’t quite understand. It must have been monkey for ‘sic ‘em’ though, because the next thing I knew, the tackily dressed orangutan had wielded a shotgun and was galloping toward me. A second later however, he was moaning on the floor holding his stomach. Well, I didn’t know what happened, but the fearful looks scattered around the room told me I was to blame. I turned to run out the door, but mid-turn my eye fell upon the woman that had initiated the attack. And she was holding the shotgun. My body begged me to flee before it was too late, but the very sight stunned me for that one crucial second, and I only came to after hearing the thunderous sound of the gun being fired. I looked down, dumbstruck, as ten small pellets exploded from the gun and floated through the air toward me. My eyes were keen, my brain was sharp. I could track the every movement of those twelve pellets through the air. However, my body refused to move. For a moment, I simply wouldn’t allow myself to believe that it was really happening. But it was. The impact I felt when finally hit was tremendous. As a matter of fact, I was knocked back, stumbling off the porch. Usually the pain of falling down eight stone steps and coming to rest on a low, rusty, sharp, and otherwise uncomfortable garden fence would take me to another dimension of pain. This time, however, it faded in comparison to the pain that was already surging through my body, more specifically my neck, chest, and stomach. I wasn’t only surprised that I was alive; I was also quite a bit disappointed. Any large measure of pain will do that to you. Still, that feeling didn’t last long, for a second later, my body simply shut down. My heartbeat slowed, my body became completely numb, and I took one last gasping breath before falling into a deep sleep.
I don’t know how long I was asleep. I felt much better physically, except that my head was spinning painfully. I decided not to open my eyes, considering that the bright sunlight would only make me feel worse. Instead, I started to feel around with my hands. However, the movements of my hands made me realize that I was, in fact, already standing up. My eyes popped open as I almost fell over. I was standing next to an ambulance, for some reason. The truck was sitting in an alley, just yards from the street. I slowing turned and walked toward the street, all the while keeping my eyes clinched closed tightly, trying to suppress the pain between my eyes. Well, that turned out to be a bad idea, walking with my eyes closed, that is. Go figure. I caught my foot on something, and I went sprawling across the pavement. After I picked the pebbles out of my teeth, I reached down and picked up the item that had attacked me. It was clothing, a uniform. A paramedic’s uniform. I immediately took another look around me, and there right in front of me, standing against the wall, I saw a well-dressed man. I jumped to my feet, more than a little embarrassed at the scene. “Who are you?”, I asked impatiently. Instead of simply answering me, he said instead, “Is this the life you want to live?” He walked up to my side, putting his mouth just inches away from my ear. I could feel his warm, nasty man-breath on my face as he continued, “It can end right now if you want it to. You know that. You help us, we help you. That is, if your answer comes soon. That’s really your only chance. Otherwise, the rest of your life will be just like this, day in, day out.” He stepped back and looked at me. “Admittedly, if you choose foolishly, I don’t think you’d have long to suffer. I mean, the fact that every branch of law enforcement worldwide would use every available resource to hunt you down is the least of your problems. You’ll have Ace to deal with, and believe me, he’ll find you long before the Feds even know they want you. Well,” he said with a smile, pulling out a cell phone, “what’s it gonna be?”
He made a good point, of course, but I knew from looking at him that I wasn’t going to go along with anything he said. “What rank are you?” I asked him, ignoring the question. He massaged his forehead like a parent that was dealing with a mentally challenged toddler. To my surprise, he answered me. “I’m Agent 73, Deputy Chief of reconnaissance. In other words, for the past seven years, I’ve been assigned to the task of getting you back.”
I thought for a moment. “Seven years? Why do you say seven years?” I thought about what Gerald told me about them kidnapping my wife to get me back. I looked at him hard to let him know that I wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. However he didn’t seem to like the question, as was evident in his response. “Will you cooperate or not?” he snapped, obviously losing his patience. “Cooperate with you crooks? Over my dead body.” He seemed to be satisfied with my answer, because the smug smile returned to his face as he returned the cell phone to his pocket. “If that’s the way you want it.” I didn’t. What I really wanted was to hear from his own mouth what exactly happened seven years ago, but I had to be firm. I stood somewhat stunned as he walked past me to the large ambulance. He grabbed the handles, and in one swift movement, the doors flew open and a large motorcycle was revealed. With a push of a button, the engine started to hum almost inaudibly, and he hopped on. I quickly said to him, “I shouldn’t be alive.” The fact that I was presumably a “super agent” never sunk in until now. I literally felt fine, and I couldn’t fathom why. He said, “Yes, you should. There would be a lot of surprised people if that shot had killed you.” Then looking me up and down with an amused grin on his face, he added bluntly, “I don’t know why everyone else is so scared of you. Looking at you is like looking at a powerful weapon in the hands of an infant.” He then turned that quiet kitten of a motorcycle into a roaring lion, and he flew out the back of the ambulance, down the alley, and out into the busy street. As for me, I was still at square one.
I had the presence of mind to leave that alley as soon as possible. It was getting late, and there’s nothing like being in a dingy New York City alley at night to make you unsure of yourself. I started walking towards the river, realizing that I couldn’t stay on the main streets of Brooklyn for long without being recognized. I didn’t allow myself to even go down the street my house was on, but instead went to a local riverside park. As I got closer, I noticed that there was someone already there. I quietly walked closer until I could see that it was a mother and child playing on the swings. Relaxing a little, I took a seat on the bench and watched the genuine happiness they shared. I started to wonder what life would’ve been like if I could have put Jessica in that scene: a happy woman with the child she always wanted. One of the few things I found out about Jessica was the fact that she wanted children, it seems we both did. Allen couldn’t even tell me that, we had to ask her gynecologist. According to her, we both planned on having children, but let other things get in the way. I could never imagine anyone being happy in that kind of situation. However, I pushed that thought away from me quickly. I had more than enough to occupy my mind, getting killed for one. I lowered my head to my hands, running my fingers through my hair. I had to smile as I realized that I was no longer the same man in any way. From the smallest facial blemish to the growing bald spot - they were all gone. If only Jessica could see me now. Allen said she always looked like she was in her twenties. And now so do I, I thought, except for my…
I knew that someone had just sat next to me, just as I remembered I was walking around with my red eyes exposed. I must have lost my sunglasses when Rambo’s grandmother shot me. While keeping my head low, I greeted the person next to me. A gentle, female voice responded. “Are you okay?” I turned my head toward her, but continued to look at the ground. “I just have a bad migraine. You know, “ I said, pointing to the street lamp above us, “sensitive to light.” I heard her give a little sigh. I felt a little bad for being abrupt to her, so I looked over at the young boy playing on the swing. “Is that your son?”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “Step-son.” She added quickly, “not that it matters. I’m the only mother he’s ever known.” She shifted on the bench. “I’m Madelyn.” Not knowing what to say, I hesitated. She didn’t. “Do you have any children?” I must have shook a little, because she slid away from me an inch or two. She brought up the subject that I was unwilling to dwell on just moments before. Jessica and I both had good jobs, hers at NYU, and mine at the airport. Apparently we thought we had time. But over six years ago, not long before my accident, she took some students to Africa to the opening of a museum. I chose not to go, even though now I look back and couldn’t imagine letting her go overseas alone if I had a say in the matter. Of course I don’t remember why I didn’t go, but it was probably some silly little thing. I’ve always regretted it.
“What happened?”
I looked up. I had said every word out loud, and she was listening. I paused, not willing to continue the sad story. Just as I was about to give in, the little boy came skipping up to us from across the playground. I breathed a sigh of relief as he asked me my name. “I’m Jack,” I said, squinting down at him so as not to let him see my eyes. “You must be Jimmy,” I continued, not even thinking. The two of them looked at me with surprise, and the boy scrutinized me closely. “Have we met?” his mother asked curiously. I looked straight out to the river and smiled sheepishly. “I might have heard you two talking on the swings.” I braced myself, wondering what she was thinking. But that turned out to be nothing, for she seemed to have lost interest in the subject. I snuck a glance at her for the first time.
“You know, I have friends that are still unsure of what they want in life, and some know exactly what they want, and just can’t attain it. I think I’ve been truly blessed, because I have everything I’ve ever wanted.” She stroked her son’s hair lovingly. “Like this little guy here. He was only 7 months old when I met his father. Now he’s already in second grade.” She pinched his cheeks, something he didn’t seem to care for very much. “And my husband is the most kind, considerate man you’ve ever met.”
I went back to examining the river. ”If you begged him to go overseas with you, would he refuse and stay home for some petty little reason?”
She was silent for a few moments, and when I finally looked over, she was still looking at me, but with a blank stare. She shook her head and said firmly, “He’s not that bad. No, I’m sure of it, he’s just a very busy guy. He always finds some time for us on the weekends. Especially for little Jimmy, and he’s the one that really needs it most. Right?” I didn’t agree, but I didn’t tell her that. It turned out to be a rhetorical question anyway, because a moment later she continued, “Ours was a match made in heaven.” She sounded so confident that I had to ask, “What makes you think that?”
“Well, everything, I guess. I mean, I worked as a waitress in a little Italian restaurant about a mile away. I wasn’t making very much there, and one day I heard one of the customers say that he would do anything for a good, reliable secretary. Well, I went up to him and simply asked if he would consider hiring me. He said yes, and that was the beginning of the whole thing. He’s a big successful attorney, and he picked me out of all people, not to be his secretary, but his wife! And then he gave me everything I’ve ever wanted. Money, a house, everything. If I had the chance, I wouldn’t change a thing.” She had gotten herself quite worked up, but now she took a moment to breathe. I kept quiet. I personally thought that her definition of love was a little distorted. She did seem happy, though, and far be it from me to break this woman’s tranquility. Just as I was about to excuse myself from the situation, she came back to life.
“How long has it been since your wife died?” she said without flinching. I couldn’t believe this crazy lady was still talking. The boy, who was sitting on the ground by this time, was getting restless, and according to my watch, it was almost nine o’clock. But it was obvious that she, for whatever reason, was really interested in the answer to her question. So I took a moment, trying to think of which answer would be best in the situation. I could have told her that due to the fact that a secret crime organization has a serious gripe against me, my wife may have never died in the first place. Or I could tell her that she’s been “dead” for almost eight years. Well, I decided to take the easy way. She frowned sympathetically and turned away. I decided to get the next question in. “how long have you known your husband?”
Just as she was about to answer, a long shadow comes over us. I glanced over my shoulder to see a tall pair of jeans looking back. I didn’t dare look any higher, just I case their owner catches a glimpse of my eyes. It didn’t matter, because Madelyn confirmed his identity for me. “Oh, James, we were just on our way home,” she said a little nervously. However, her husband just ignored her, and I could feel that he had turned his gaze to the back of my head. “Who do we have here?” he cooed, as if he was greeting a little friend that his son brought home from school. Since I didn’t appreciate the tone, I restricted my response to a nod and a small wave. Realizing how well her husband and I were hitting it off, Madelyn grabbed her son’s hand and announced, “Well, I’m ready to go home now honey, how about you?” Even though I couldn’t see his face, I did watch as his hand quickly rose to her face, as if to swat away any more words that dared to leave her lips, and none did. Yet, he continued to talk to me.
“Well, you two must have been talking for quite a while, huh?” he said in an excessively cheery voice. He then inserted a long pause, allowing enough time for his wife to shuffle her feet uncomfortably. Then he continued, “I’m Jim Grace friend, I’m terribly sorry that I had to interrupt your socializing. Maybe you’d like to join us for breakfast tomorrow morning. We can all get better acquainted then. What do you say?”
Madelyn perked right up when he suggested this. I didn’t sound right to me, I just didn’t like the guy. I hadn’t even seen the guy’s face, but something about him just didn’t sit right with me. In the end I said that “I would try”, and the only reason I said that was because there was something about Madelyn’s manner that reminded me of happier times. A vague feeling at best. But if I’m honest, I said yes because I never expected to live that long. I have to say, that's a pretty depressing feeling to have. I figured that if I were alive the next morning, I would go to breakfast with the jerk and his wife. After all, I hadn’t eaten all day. He told me it was a new restaurant in a certain “Vernont Tower”. All I had to do was be there at 10:00am. We then said our goodbyes, and I was left there alone. I didn’t really dwell on the preceding conversations or the people I had them with. Instead, I allowed my mind to drift back to the Agent in the alley. Was he serious about the whole “over my dead body thing”? I was bluffing, of course, but he seemed serious. I couldn’t understand how they could go from being nice to me to elicit my cooperation one minute, and then the next minute threatening my life as if it didn’t really matter. It just confirmed my suspicions; they knew something that I didn’t, something about me. It exhausted me just to think about it. All I could do at that point was stretch out on that hard bench and hope that I don’t wake up in jail or, even worse, not at all.
I woke up on the ground, with the imprint of the bench in one cheek, and little pieces of concrete in the other. I once again had a headache, but this time I could blame it on the impact of falling off of a park bench. That was only a wild guess though, because I’ve never fallen off a park bench before. Anyway, I decided to get off the ground, and as I slowly did, I accidentally remembered the predicament I was in. The night before I must have been too tired to worry about it much. I surely didn’t lose any sleep over it, that’s for sure. But after a full night’s sleep I was thinking a little clearer. I realized that the Agent could have been bluffing when he suggested that I was no more valuable alive than I was dead. However, I had no way of knowing for sure, so I assumed he meant it. On the other hand, I didn’t just want to give up. At least I didn’t want them to know that I’ve given up. If they want to kill me, I thought, they’re going to do it. In the meantime, I’m going to continue to live. I wasn’t sure what that was going to involve, but it didn’t matter. It was either sit down and wait to die, or pretend like that wasn’t my last day on earth and get going. So go I did. The only problem was that nature was against me. It started snowing.
Now when I say “snowing”, I don’t mean the kind of snow that you might have to shovel in a couple days, if it keeps up. No, this was the kind of snow that they find your corpse in. it went from an unseasonably warm fifty-five degrees the night before, to WAY below freezing and snowing on that January morning. I didn’t even notice the cold that much, but when the snow started to pile up on my head, I took notice. The snowing kept getting worse and worse until it was a full-blown blizzard. The wind was blowing so hard that as I walked away, I could see the unoccupied, yet substantial metal park bench slowly sliding across the pavement. As a matter of fact, I started to slide across the pavement too, but still I walked on. I needed to find somewhere to sit the storm out, but I couldn’t imagine being in some public place, considering that I was still a fugitive. On the other hand, aside from unicorns and fifty-foot apes, there’s nothing more noticeable than a guy in a black suit walking down the street in a snowstorm. Actually, considering that the city was in the midst of a huge blizzard, the streets were probably the safest place to be in that regard. There were very few on the sidewalk, and the few that were on the street were either dashing into buildings or vehicles. So I continued to walk to no place in particular.
My stomach was beginning to put up quite a fuss, considering I had not fed it in days. Isn’t funny how life or death situations make you plum forget to eat? Anyway, I decided that I should eat something soon. So I headed to the place where food can be found everywhere you turn: Manhattan. As a matter of fact, sometimes the food even chases you down the street, so I knew that was the place to be. I just had to hurry and get there before the streets were completely empty. Those vendors would stay out if there was water up to their necks, just as long as there are people on the street. When the people go, they go. So I headed to the bridge as fast as the wind would allow me.
As I made my way down the streets of Manhattan, I was disappointed to see only the rare person trotting down the sidewalk, and absolutely no vendors of any kind. I wasn’t really discouraged until I saw a large electronic billboard that told all pedestrians to “find shelter”. I was once more walking without purpose. Five, ten, twenty blocks passed, and still I hadn’t seen one food item on the large, city street. The snow was already almost a foot deep, and after twenty blocks, it was a workout just lifting my legs that high. Just as I was about to give up and go in to one of the crowded fast-food restaurants, I saw in the distance a man standing behind a covered cart. I almost ran up to him as I hurdled two fire hydrants and a toddler. When I finally made it, I was about to slam my fist on the table and demand some food. However, as I was walking up the young man behind the cart looked a little scared, even before he saw me. More specifically, he looked like a child at the doctor that was already tensing up for the booster shot. So, in the gentlest voice I could muster, I said, “um, hi there”. Well, just like someone flipped a switch, he turned to me with a forced smile you’d expect from a freezing cold street vendor. “Would you like to buy commemorative items from the grand opening of Saint Emerald?”
“is that all you’ve got?!” I could’ve pulled out my hair at that point. I walked twenty million blocks to buy commemorative items? “what is ‘Saint Emerald, anyway?”
“You haven’t heard of the ‘Saint Emerald’?” he said in surprise. He didn’t seem at all bothered by my red eyes. “It’s the new five-star restaurant in Vernont Tower. This stuff has been selling pretty good, considering only certain VIP’s will be allowed for the next couple weeks. No one else can get in.”
I thought for a moment, remembering the breakfast invitation that Mr. Jerk offered me the night before. I glanced at my watch. 10:12am. “So you’re saying that there wont be hardly any people in that restaurant this morning?”
“Very few. Only rich guys.” That’s all needed to know. “Hey, where is this Vernont Tower?” I asked. He pointed over his shoulder. “We’re standing right in front of it.” I looked up at the big building. I was going to eat good that morning, assuming they were still there. Then as an afterthought I turned back to the vendor. “Who would buy pictures of a restaurant in a blizzard? More to the point, who would sell pictures of a restaurant in a blizzard?” The man stopped and actually pondered the question, struggling to come up with a good answer. I left him to it as I ran into the building.
I walked into the large lobby, which was sparsely furnished. It was nice, but didn’t look like it contained a five-star restaurant. I walked up to the desk in the middle of the room. Without making eye contact with the man sitting behind it, I quickly asked what floor the Saint Emerald restaurant was on. Without looking up, he pointed to the elevator and said flatly “28th floor.” Always appreciating a straight answer at times like this, I took off toward the elevators, but he stopped me. “Hey,” he yelled. “I have to call up there and they have to okay you.” He picked up the phone and asked me my name. After chatting with the person on the other line, he waved me on. Now I’ll tell you honestly that at that point my mind was centered on getting some food. The ride in that old creaky elevator was murder on my already abnormally large appetite, but eventually I made it to the 28th floor. Even the button in the elevator had the name of the restaurant in fancy writing. Thus, I did not expect what greeted me when the door slid open.
I walked out of that elevator to see construction material from wall to wall. Paint cans, plywood, and power tools covered the floor. One thing was sure: a five-star restaurant it wasn’t. it didn’t even look like it was ever going to be a restaurant, with large security cameras in every corner. All of the large windows were standing wide open, with piles of snow forming all over the floor. The near gale-force winds swept through the room, knocking over cans of paint, which spilled all over the floor. I truly couldn’t believe what I was seeing, or rather what I wasn’t seeing. I couldn’t imagine that anyone was currently there, but with blind optimism I looked around the corner. I was taken aback to find about 10 or 12 construction workers standing around eating in the middle of the mess. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to tell a group of professionals that if they don’t close those windows, they just might ruin the floor, along with other things. It seemed painfully obvious, so I didn’t say anything, I just stood there. it wasn’t but a few seconds before one of the workers saw me. After that everything went a little crazy.
Out of nowhere gunshots were fired, and three workers went down. The rest of the group turned to me enraged, even though I didn’t see a single gun in the room. You see, this time my brain was working, and I had the good sense to run. However, the floor was very slippery with all the snow that had accumulated, and I didn’t get very far. Several of the men hit me with flying tackles, and another one concentrated on knocking my legs from under me. I didn’t go down, though. I put every ounce of my remaining strength into moving toward the door. Getting out. And it was working for a few seconds. But as the bodies started to pile on, I started to lose it. I tried as hard as I could, but the seven pairs of hands pulled at me with overpowering force. My feet slid across the wet floor helplessly as I was slowly dragged across the room. When I finally turned my head to see where I was being taken, I saw nothing but open air. I gave one finally heave, but as my legs touched the edge of the windowsill, I knew it was over.
* * *
The studio was full of confusion, with people going every which way in preparation for the morning’s news report. Ken Evans, the anchorman, sat talking to the producer on the side while getting his face touched up. They were going over the information they had on the flight 265 murder, which was scanty to say the least. They caught wind of a tip given in Paris just hours ago, where someone claimed to have seen the murderer himself. The FBI, however, discredited it, saying that it was impossible for the suspect to have been in Paris at the time. They had just admitted that there hadn’t been any new developments when a crewmember handed the producer a piece of paper. She glanced over it and smiled. “Here’s our story”, she said, giving him the paper.
“Good morning New York! This is Ken Evans with W.S.N.Y., delivering you this morning’s headlines. We’ll begin with some breaking news that occurred just minutes ago. This is regarding the man that took the life of one Allen Stewart yesterday morning. According to our sources, he was seen this morning going into the Vernont building in lower Manhattan. In the lobby of the building he overpowered the on-duty guard, who is now in the hospital in stable condition. The suspect then went up to the 28th floor, apparently intending to take hostages once he got there. Fortunately that floor is under construction, in preparation of some offices that will be put there. Because of that fact, only ten construction workers were on the floor at the time, seven of which were new workers that were being trained, that being their first day on the job. Immediately after leaving the elevator, the suspect shot the three veteran workers, leaving them with non-fatal injuries. Reacting quickly, the trainees tried to restrain him. Despite the sheer numbers against him, the suspect started to make his way towards the elevator. But the workers bravely continued to wrestle with the armed assassin. They weren’t able to restrain him, but instead they ended up getting too close to one of the windows, from which the suspect fell to his death. The wounded workers are all residents of upstate New York, whereas the identities of the seven trainees are not yet known. Authorities were alerted when the guard regained consciousness thirty minutes later. By that time the surviving workers had left, and the FBI assumes that the reason was that the workers were illegal immigrants that didn’t want to get involved with authorities. After regaining consciousness, the wounded workers were strangely unable to remember any information that could identify the unknown trainees. The body of he suspect was found in a snowdrift after twenty minutes of searching, and he was legally pronounced dead by the coroner at the scene. The authorities know exactly what happened because surveillance cameras recorded the whole struggle. We can now show you the greater portion of that recording. We want to first caution sensitive viewers that the footage may be graphic.” As the city watched that video, plainly showing the killer falling out of a 28th-story window, you could almost hear a sigh of relief go out from every home. For most, this was the end of quite a scary ordeal. But for a select few, this was just the beginning.
Ace sat in front of the monitor, deep in thought. Nothing was on the monitor, and his thoughts were elsewhere, but he was not there of his own will. “Why are we watching this again?” he asked, a little irritated. The Chief Medical Advisor stood before him, gathering his thoughts. He was about to say something that his boss probably wouldn’t like. “Sir, I thought that it would be wise to go over these surveillance videos again. We found something that you might want to see.” Ace hesitated, then nodded, and motioned for him to continue. The Advisor pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. “First, there was something that didn’t make sense to me. When Eleven was being examined on the way here, my assistant said that he found some major lacerations. But when they got here, I couldn’t find an injury of any kind on the body. Of course I know that because of his reinforced skeletal structure, we can’t expect any broken bones. However, perhaps you would agree that the absence of even the smallest bruise on the body of a man that fell 28 stories is strange, to say the least.” “Not this man,” Ace pointed out.
“Yes sir.” The Advisor left it at that. “Okay, I’ll start the video. At first they were only concentrating on the videos that the police still have, for obvious reasons. But when they started examining the video from the other cameras in the room, we found something interesting. But first I’ll show you the video from the primary camera again, for comparison.” Ace let out a sigh of impatience, but said nothing. They watched the video from the entryway on the floor. The small space had walls on either side for at least five feet before it opened up to the rest of the large room. One would have to stand almost directly in front of it to be caught on tape, which Jack was, as he walked into the room slowly, looking left and right. The camera was behind him, so little of interest could be seen. He stood a few feet away, looking around the room, which had what seemed to be snow all over the floor. Then, as he stepped forward, he reached down slightly, and at that exact moment gunshots could be heard. He immediately turned towards the door and started to run back to the elevators. It wasn’t a second later that men came into the camera’s view and started jumping on Jack. A few moments later he had seven huge men hanging from him and pulling on him, but he continued on. Then at some point he started moving backwards, and visible fear could be seen on his face. He slid across the floor faster and faster until he reached one of the big windows. The windowsill hit him on the back of the knees, and for a moment he stood there, teetering on the edge. He then squeezed his eyes shut as if he was about to jump in a lake, and his legs flew into the air as he fell backwards out of the window. The Advisor chose this point to pause the video. “Now there are some finer points that we can only get from other viewing perspectives. Now we’ll look at the video taken from another angle.”
The Advisor started the video again. This time the camera was placed behind the construction workers. They watched as Jack stepped into the room and looked around. Then as he reached down to pull his pants leg out of the melting snow, three shot were fired, though a gun could not be seen. The three workers in the front fell to the floor, and the rest of the men rushed Jack. The Advisor paused the video here. “Now I know your guys put a lot of work into this part. They did a good job of making the entry wounds in the front of the body. I still don’t know how they did it, but there is still a problem. They had to use a small low-caliber gun to make sure they weren’t shot themselves. There are no exit wounds, thus the bullets were still in the bodies. If someone gets a hold of those bullets, they could easily determine how far away the shooter was. And things would go way downhill from there.” “Already taken care of.” Ace responded. “We used the new ballistics package we designed two years ago. A soon as that bullet hit the oxygenated stomach acid, it’ll start to break down. Within minutes, it would have soaked into the stomach lining and would be untraceable.”
The Advisor nodded appreciatively. “Huh. Of course, the very absence of a bullet would cause some suspicion, but little will come of it.” Ace nodded, glad that the thinking behind his well thought out plan was noticed. The Advisor waved that point away, anxious to get to the real point before his listener stopped listening. “Well, that was only a side point. I wouldn’t have wasted your time with that. Let me continue the video here.” They continued to watch as the men struggled in the middle of the floor. The Advisor zoomed in so that the men’s expressions could be seen more clearly. They could now see the helpless fear in Jack’s face. But as he slid up to the window, he closed his eyes, making a face that was between pain and concentration. The expression stayed until he went over the edge of the windowsill. Then in a flash his legs flew into the air, blocking his face, and he went over the side. The Advisor reversed the video. “Now did you see the face that he had before he went over? It seemed as if he was concentrating.” Ace nodded, yet remained unimpressed. “Well,” the advisor continued, “it gets stranger.”
“I’m going to slow it down a little.” He replayed the moment just before Jack went over, and they both looked closely. Then, as Jack fell, one of the men surrounding him jumped back as if he had been electrocuted. “Hah! You see there?” the Advisor said triumphantly. Ace simply grunted. “that’s agent 132. He’s just a rookie still, and it doesn’t take much to scare him.” The Advisor jabbed a finger at the screen. “But look at what scared him!” He started the video once more in slow motion. They watched as Jack’s leg lifted higher and higher until part of his face was visible. And they both stared as one eye was revealed, one eye that was cloudy white from its inner core to its outer edge. Ace seemed slightly shook by this revelation, or at the least moved. “Well, have you guys determined what this means?” “Well, yes we have,” the Advisor said nervously, “but we had to call for help.” He walked over to the door and opened it. A man well into his seventies walked into the room. Ace slapped his forehead in aggravation. Then facing the man, said, “No matter what assignment I give you, you just keep finding your way back.” The elderly man just smiled. the advisor stepped in. “I guess you’re well familiar with Agent Johnson here. No one currently knows as much about Project Eleven as him, considering that he oversaw Eleven’s training for those years.” Ace stamped his foot on the floor and said, “I know. I gave him the position, even if it was a mistake.” He then slid around in his chair to face the other gentleman. “Alright Daniel, what do you have to tell me. And please give me the short version.”
Agent Johnson reluctantly started. “Well, going by his eyes, he got Ethium poisoning. Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that his gland pumped more Ethium than his body could process normally. But this would result in more than just enhanced abilities. When it gets to this point, a partly solidified—actually gel-like—film of liquid covers the eyes. That liquid is less than five percent pure Ethium, but it is a sure sign that one has Ethium poisoning. The big factor is that at this point, the Ethium alters the thought processes completely. It takes over the mind, if it doesn’t kill you first. So even though it doesn’t seem that Eleven knows even half of the things he is capable of, if this is Ethium poisoning, he would have control of all his abilities, at least for that short time that the Ethium is “controlling” his mind. For instance, this is seen in that any injuries he might have had mysteriously disappeared after a short time. His body can heal severe injuries only when Ethium is heavily distributed throughout the body at the time of injury. In this case, since he couldn’t overpower the agents you sent, he obviously didn’t have a high level of Ethium in his body already. He would have had to consciously do that while he was falling. Now I know personally that it took many years for him to learn to do that. I am quite sure that he wouldn’t normally remember how to do that after all these years. My point is that Ethium altered his brain. We are no longer dealing with a fifty year old that doesn’t know of his power or past. We’re now dealing with that young man that we couldn’t contain years ago, or now.” Agent Johnson cleared his throat, now ready to put all that complicated information into one, controversial statement. “I don’t think he’s dead.”
Ace frowned at him. He looked interested at first, but now they seemed to be back where they started. The Advisor saw his displeasure and interrupted, “I think what he’s trying to say is that we can’t be too careful. If he is somehow alive, although I am quite sure that he isn’t, we must act now. But since he’s not, we still must act to save the gland. The clock is ticking either way.” After giving Agent Johnson a suspicious glance, Ace stated, “Yes I do agree. As a matter of fact, I’m having a hard time believing he’s dead myself. I mean, we’ve never been successful in that area before. What are his vital signs?” The Advisor answered, “He has none. They couldn’t even get a pulse at the scene.” This prompted Ace to think a little. After a short time he said, “you know, Daniel, this may have been the first time we agree on something. I want you to come with me. I have a stop to make that you might enjoy. And you,” he said, turning back to the Advisor, “I want you to move the body to the vault and put a couple of guys on him. Then I want you to put a few motion detectors on his body. Finally I want you to monitor his gland and brain activity. I’ll be there in less than a hour.”
The Advisor walked away, disappointed. Agent Johnson didn’t look too happy either. “listen Ace,” he said firmly, “you know I don’t agree with this at all. I don’t even believe that you’ll be able to pull this off. And even if you do succeed, that doesn’t make it right.” Ace put his hand up. “so you still feel that way, do you? Well, that’s too bad, but we both know that your opinion means very little in this case. As long as you’re on this project, you’ll forget your foolish sentimentality and do what’s best for the team and it’s interests. You’ve always had this hang-up, and it’s made you all but useless. If you had helped in this little recon’ job, we wouldn’t have had to risk killing Jack. With what you know, you could have done so much more.” Ace paused to read whatever reaction Agent Johnson had to this, and then motioned for him to follow him into the hall. Johnson fell silent for a while as they walked down the halls, taking that opportunity to do some thinking. After a few minutes of silence, he spoke up. “You know Ace, I could have been wrong about Jack. Now that I know he had no pulse, I think that it proves that he is, in fact, very dead.” Ace didn’t even turn his head. “That’s not what you were saying a few minutes ago.” Johnson shook his head. “Anyone can make a mistake. I bet that even you have made a mistake or two in all your years.” That got Ace’s attention. He turned around quickly and glared into the Agent’s face. “Will you please realize that no matter what you say or do, I am going through with this.” He turned and started walking once again. “And so are you.”
When the two men came to the end of the hall, they stopped in front of a large door and faced each other. “I don’t want to do this,” Johnson said firmly. Ace opened the door. “You have no choice.” Ace held the door open for him and waited as he slowly walked in. The room was in fact an operating room, but the agent already knew that. It wasn’t the room he was avoiding; it was the person in the room. The only other people in the room were a surgeon, who looked all dressed up and prepared to operate, and his patient, who was lying on the operating table, half-conscious. The patient was a small boy, not even in his teens. The heart monitor beeped slowly as the boy took short, gasping breaths. Agent Johnson looked sadly at the boy, but Ace simply stood there, expressionless. The surgeon walked toward Ace. “I don’t know how long I can keep him in this state, Chief. If he goes into a coma, we wont be able to bring him back.” But his Chief didn’t respond. Agent Johnson spoke up. “how long do can you safely keep him there?” The surgeon looked at him with a sober expression. “We’re way past that point.”
Ace now interrupted. “Would you two stop acting like your surprised? We all knew that we had to have Ethium already in his system before we operated. We’re keeping him alive, I don’t know what the problem is.” He walked up to the table with the child on it. “If this one doesn’t survive, we’ll just have to use another. When the right host comes along, we wont have to worry about him. Believe me, if this one dies, I say it’s just as well.” Agent Johnson just shook his head. “You don’t even talk about this kid like he’s a human being. You’re willing to ruin his life to get what you want.” Then, staring Ace right in the face, he said, “you don’t even have that much time left in your own life, neither of us do. But still, you’ve managed to leave behind something that will have to feel the pain that you’ve always tried to cause others. I know what you want me to do, and I’m not going to do it. I shouldn’t have done it the first time, but you left me no choice. This time I can decide. I’m having no part in it.” Yes, the words were firm, resolute, determined. But the man who said them stood still, not able to follow through with his threat, or even to leave the room. Worse yet, his Chief knew why. Thus his words quickly became empty, for they both knew that when it came to this task, he would never turn it down. Because of that fact, Johnson gave a new defense.
“This would take years, and I’m way too old. There’s no way I would ever be able to complete an assignment like this.” Ace patted him on the back. “I wouldn’t consider anyone else for the job.” He then gave Johnson a big smile and walked out, leaving him with his thoughts. He was truly torn in this situation. On the one hand, he didn’t want to be in any way involved in this atrocity. It was like murder, except instead of killing this young boy, Ace was going to destroy any chances of him having a normal life. What makes it even sicker is that Ace probably wont even be alive to see the result of his criminal plan. On the other hand, Ace was going to do it anyway, and if left to his own devices, he could make the situation ten times worse. As he pondered this decision, he looked over to the child on the table. The boy had just started to convulse violently, and as he did, a thin line of saliva made it’s way down his mouth. Johnson quickly moved a hand over and pulled up the boy’s eyelids, revealing an ever-growing pupil within. “where did you inject him?!” he yelled over to the surgeon. “directly below the brain!” the surgeon yelled back, raising his voice above the heart monitor, which was beeping persistently. “What?!” Johnson said, infuriated. “what were you thinking? He’ll be dead within the hour! He’s might already have brain damage, and it won’t be long until his brain shuts down altogether. We have to perform surgery immediately!”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” the surgeon said quickly, raising his hand, “Ace would never allow it, and besides, we’ll have to use the secondary gland, which we don’t need now that we got Eleven back. If we use the secondary gland, we’ll probably end up killing the kid anyway. I say we just wait and take the good gland.” Johnson started to take off his jacket. “there’s no time for all of that. This is the kid’s only chance to live, no matter how terrible his life might turn out to be. And from the looks of it, I’m now the head Agent on this project anyway. So as commanding officer of Project Twelve, I order you to gather your team and do this operation!”
The two rookie agents made their way down the long hall, with the Chief medical advisor following close behind. They were wheeling a large glass case, with their subject suspended upright inside. They all walked rigidly, quickly, in fear of what they did not know. Right in front of them was a legend, a being whose existence was kept a guarded secret for years, even within the impenetrable walls of the Just Cause secret facilities. All the Agents who were this legend’s counterparts were dead or discharged, both being equally incapable of divulging any information on the matter. You see, when one has to leave the ranks of a secret crime organization, for whatever reason, they are never allowed to leave with even the least incriminating information. Yes, none could really shed any light on Project Eleven except for the only to active members of the organization: the Chief himself, who only had told what was necessary to capture Eleven, and another little known Agent, who had been sent out on assignment some six years prior. Everything the three men had been told was pure speculation, and thus they felt very unsure about being alone in the vault with this thing. But as the medical advisor had assured them, he was dead, and that assurance would have to be enough.
The advisor opened the door to the vault, a small room about ten feet square. As they walked in, they noticed that the monitoring equipment was not there yet. The Advisor walked up to the body, suddenly realizing that to prep the body for the monitoring equipment, he would have to come in contact with the body. What am I scared of, he thought to himself. He’s dead, there’s no way he can hurt me. But his overpowering fear of the unknown did not allow him to relax. It did however, allow him to do his duty. With trembling hands, he slid the door off of the container, causing the young guards to step back a few feet. He made himself look in the face of the corpse, hoping to convince himself of the truth. A pale face, a face contorted with serious pain, looked back at him. The kind of pain you don’t live long enough to describe. It was most definitely the face of a dead man, and the Advisor, a doctor himself, found comfort in this, being a man that saw dead bodies everyday. He relaxed a little, slowly rolling up the sleeves on Eleven’s dinner jacket and the shirt beneath. Although he felt much less apprehensive, he did decide to do as little as possible, instead of sticking around to wait for the equipment to arrive. But before he left, to prove to himself his own lack of fear, he calmly turned his back to the corpse and, leaving the container open, walked towards the guards. “Don’t worry,” he said, both guards by that time cowering near the door, “he’s dead, take my word for it. There’s nothing to be scared of. Now, the Chief will be here in about ten minutes, make sure you at least look like you know what your doing by the time he gets here. When the equipment arrives, I’ll be monitoring it by remote, because right now I have to go to surgery to prepare for the operation.” The rookies nodded, determined, brave. The medical advisor left, leaving them to their own devices, and right away one of them started walking cockily up to the case.
“It don’t look so tough,” the cocky one observed, motioning for his companion to come closer. The other guard however, a younger and less confident man than the first, was having none of that. “you’d better get away from there, Ace’ll be here in a few minutes. Plus, how can you get that close to it? I mean, I heard that it COULDN’T die.”
“Do you believe everything you’re told? The Doc’ said it was dead, and that’s good enough.” He jabbed a thumb towards the body. “I ain’t scared of it anyway, I don’t care what people say.” But in the next second, he proved himself wrong, jumping high into the air and screaming “HE MOVED, HE MOVED!!” This threw the other guard into a panic, and they both flew at the door, kicking and screaming. The door was locked, however, and despite their best efforts, they were to remain trapped in the room with this thing, this legend.
The operation room was in a panic as well, as the Chief medical advisor could instantly see when he walked in. there were no less than seven surgeons buzzing around the room, plus several confused nurses.
“What’s going on here, Johnson?”, the Advisor demanded. The older agent, the only one in the room not busied otherwise, didn’t seem to hear him, but kept his eyes fixed on the turmoil in front of him. However, a nearby surgeon who was changing out of his torn gloves came over. “We ran into a little snag sir. Agent 47, Head of Operations Johnson that is, started surgery early for fear that the patient would suffer irreversible harm in the next few hours. So we ended up using the secondary gland, contrary to the Chief’s instructions. But now it seems that they’re losing the patient, Twelve, that is. They haven’t yet told me why.” Just then Agent Johnson twirled around quickly to face the talking men. “Where’s Ace?!”
“On his way to the Vault, I assume, why?” Johnson passed him and went through the door, saying over his shoulder, “I’ll tell you on the way.” The medical advisor, confused and a little frustrated, followed Johnson, who was almost trotting down the hall. “Listen,” he said panting after catching up with the older man. “I realize the position the Chief gave you in this project, but as his medical advisor, I need to know everything that goes on in that room. Now how is it that the surgery began prematurely?” Johnson however, chose to ignore the question, but said instead, “the secondary gland would have worked just as well. We were able to successfully insert it under the brain, as a matter of fact. We then had to prime the gland with Ethium, so to speak, which it would be able to replicate and store for the future. But somehow, one of the body’s natural responses to the presence of the gland sent it into shock, and the gland responded as it was designed to. Because of the severity of the response, which was similar to a massive stroke, the gland put the body into a self-induced vegetative state, which would normally allow the body, in cooperation with gland, to heal itself.” The advisor said nothing for a minute. Still confused, he finally said, “so what’s the panic?”
Johnson stopped mid-step and faced him. “the problem isn’t in there. Until now, they thought that the kid was dead. That’s my point, when the gland shuts down the body like that, all vital signs are undetectable. That’s because there aren’t really any vital signs to detect. The body starts to cool, skin cells start to die off, and after an extended period of time, the early stages of rigor mortis sets in. Now all this will go only so far, since Twelve is still alive. But now I can be quite sure that this is the same state that Jack is in. That’s why he was able to heal after the fall.” The advisor stood still, fascinated. “But how was he able to survive the fall in the first place?” Johnson didn’t answer right away, but instead started down the hall again, only slower this time. There were so many factors involved, and he could not stand there and cover them now. There wasn’t enough time. “I need you to go back to the operating room immediately and tell them not to try to revive Twelve. I need everybody to clear that room, Twelve will be alright. Then, once everyone’s out, I want you to put the whole wing on lockdown, level seven. You’ll have to use my security code to do it. Understand?” The advisor did not. He knew, however, that it was an order from his new ranking officer, Head of Operations Daniel Johnson, and thus had to be done, no matter how he felt about it. But he did have one question. “Where are you going?” “To save your chief” was the answer, as Agent Johnson started back down the hall.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the facility, Ace walked toward the vault. Even from a distance of ten yards, he could hear the pitiful whines of the two young rookie agents inside. Ace reflected on the fact that most of their new recruits have been outstanding failures. The worst of them all had been the short one that ran off, helping Eleven to escape and destroying the Sahara compound. As of the past few years, Ace had been going soft, simply wiping the memory of those that had to be discharged. In other words, letting them live, which was out of character for Ace. However, no such mercy could be expected or even hoped for in that case. Ace could think of nothing worse than a traitor, and that was the exact reason that he would have to make an example of Eleven. He well knew there were many rumors about Eleven’s amazing power and skill. That is what will make this an especially profound example.
As he turned his key in the door, he could hear the young recruits scrambling to their feet. But by the time he opened the door, there they were, standing at attention, though obviously still shaken. Ace simply shook his head and walked past them, focusing his attention on the limp body propped up in the middle of the room. He remembered well the billions of dollars that went into this man, a portion going into his years of training, another portion going into his perfect environment. That would all be considered a loss now. However, the biggest investment, the most important and unique part of this being, could be recovered. Today.
Still on the other side of the compound, Agent Johnson trotted down the halls. Though tired and out of breath, he knew he couldn’t stop. Ace equipped the vault so that nothing could get in or out – including radio signals. Right now Ace’s only chance for survival might be him. Johnson reflected on why, thinking back to the early days of Project Eleven. He was there from its troubled beginning to its tragic end. He remembered, for instance, when they were first testing Jack’s response to Ethium. Somehow he didn’t die, despite the high dosage he was given. Instead, he gave everyone a small taste of how much damage he could do, taking out guards and almost escaping from a high security containment building. Ace loved it, taking the boy under his wing, and outside of his training and instruction, they were always together. Grandfather and grandson, the elder teaching the younger. Ace should have been stopped right then, because his influence on the boy over the years turned him into a twisted machine, something they all came to regret.
Ace waited as the men put the first of the monitoring equipment next to the glass case. It seemed as if his medical advisor had left for surgery, though he should’ve been here to make sure that everything was set up properly. Ace thus had to take it upon himself to watch the men like a hawk as they attached the heart monitor to Eleven’s chest. Ace waited expectantly as they finally finished. Now was the time to see if he was truly still alive. They plugged up the heart monitor, but Ace was disappointed to hear one long, steady tone coming from it. The workers looked at him uncertainly, but he kept his eyes fixed on Eleven. He looked terrible, very much dead indeed. Nonetheless, Ace just couldn’t bring himself to believe that he was really dead…
Not far away, Head of Operations Daniel Johnson was still making his way toward the Vault, though slower now. He never was that fit, but because of his age he was even less so. His primary goal now was to make sure that everyone survived that day. That had always been left up to him, even all those years ago, when Eleven was young. Johnson had always tried to give Eleven a more serious view of his duties, since the life and death of so many was often in his hands. On all the missions he went on, it was up to him to either take life or preserve it. However, years of learning from Ace had altered him beyond repair. By his early twenties, the virtues of love and compassion seemed to be completely absent in his heart, and he flaunted his lack of morality every chance he got. Life meant nothing to him, and he took it as if it were a treat he just couldn’t get enough of. Ace didn’t mind that at all. But as all soon found out, when a person disregards human feeling and compassion, loyalty goes right along with them.
Ace had made his stand. As the heart monitor hummed steadily, he resolved to stick to his guns. He instructed the workers to bring in the next set of equipment, which would include a brain activity monitor. He was not a man who changed his mind easily. That’s what ninety years of being right will do to a person. “So Jack, here we are,” he said to the body. Ace knew that he was completely alone, so he didn’t feel bad about talking to a dead man. “I knew,” he continued, “that this day would come eventually. But I didn’t envision it anything like this. I always believed that the gland would turn out defective, like all the others. You see, we could not test the gland, no more than we could test the other little puzzle pieces that make you a freak of nature. Oh, if you only knew how big of an investment you were. From your bones to your multi-million dollar eyes, you were our most expensive undertaking. And despite all the trouble you’ve caused over the years, I never discharged you. I couldn’t, no more than I could discharge that new jet that we developed. You see, what you never seemed to understand is that Project Eleven was never a code name for a mission, it was never a person, it was none of those things. If you look in the records, Project Eleven was classified as a development project, an ongoing experiment you could say. You were indeed just another step, only a vehicle for us to get where we really wanted to go. Although you were quite a success and we ended up using you for a long period of time, that’s all you ever were. Just a stepping stone that wanted to be a mountain. Just a host to keep our gland alive until we were ready for it. In surgery right now we have waiting the end that you were the means to. It will be perfection, something you obviously aren’t.” Just then there was a knock at the door, but as Ace went to open the vault door, he said over his shoulder, “if you were a TRUE success, then you wouldn’t be here now.”
Agent Johnson continued down the long hall, getting ever closer to his goal. He had several times used his radio, but he couldn’t contact anyone who could get to the vault quicker. So he trudged on, deep down hoping that his effort would prove unnecessary. Just remembering that day over three decades ago gave him chills. It happened back when Eleven was in his late teens, still discovering all his power. Johnson had been trying to teach him a new technique that was unlike all the others. He was trying to teach him to harness the glands ability to shut down all major body functions, as well as most of the brain, while still keeping the body alive. This would prove useful when Eleven came back from missions with major injuries. Although the gland had the ability to heal such things as broken bones completely in a matter of days, sometimes that was far too long. There were times when he would leave a mission half completed because of a serious injury, and the primary objective of the mission would have to be completed within hours for it to be a success. Well, putting himself into this low-energy state would enable his gland to devote all of its Ethium supply on the injury, including part of the large amount needed simply to keep Eleven alive. Although very useful, this skill took 4 years of constant training for Eleven to learn. Before he could learn any such techniques, however, he had to first learn perfect concentration, despite his surroundings. But one day he finally did learn while training in the vault. He had been in there for five days without food or water, which his body easily tolerated. What wasn’t so easy was the fact that he was hanging upside-down from the ceiling the whole time, with bright lights constantly flashing on and off. Also, a continuous loop of screaming and wailing was played as loud as his super-human ears could stand without rupturing. Through all this chaos, he was expected to focus intensely on his objective, forcing his mind to become one with an artificial body organ. But despite the complexity of this task, he did accomplish it, and proved that it could be done. Naturally, after an appropriate amount of time elapsed, they went to wake him, not quite sure if he was alive. Well, as they all found out, he woke up even more alive than when he went to sleep. After he awoke, not only did he destroy much of the building he was in, he also came close to doing the same to a few people.
It seemed that in order for him to manipulate his body functions like that and yet stay alive, he had to gain control of the parts of the brain that keep the heart beating, that keeps the body temperature constant, that carries out all our involuntary actions and responses. He had to make those functions one with his sub-conscious, which is always active, always awake. That was the only way he could keep his body functioning while asleep. But the sub-conscious also contains one’s deepest and concealed emotions, though it doesn’t always contain the restraint and common sense needed to keep them in check. Thus, when Eleven woke from his deep sleep, his tortured sub-conscious, still in control of his body and mind, was finally allowed to release. His already murderous personality was amplified by such qualities as disloyalty and greed, learned from Ace himself over the years. Without a restraint that even Ace showed, he did quite a number on the facility in a wave of mania. After leaving much damage in his wake, he then moved on to the city, where he went on a crime spree like no other. He walked the streets, leaving destruction wherever he went, and there was no end in sight, considering that no one could stop him. He roamed aimlessly, as if he were looking for something. But eventually he stopped on his own, and returned to his old self. But neither Ace nor anyone else ever looked at him the same way again, if they dared to look at him at all. As a matter of fact, that was when definite plans were made to replace Project Eleven. Eleven never knew about those plans.
Johnson recounted the past carnage of Eleven to reaffirm one fact: that if he had put his body into that same hibernation-like state before his fall, knowingly or reflexively, he was going to be in a bad mood when he woke up.
Ace knew this was it. The last way to prove whether Eleven was alive or dead was to check his brain activity. Ace knew that if this test came up negative, then Eleven was as dead as could be. That would also mean that the gland could be dead by now as well. That’s why Ace was in no hurry. He simply stood to the side as the men that had come in hooked up the complicated equipment. Despite all the concerns going through his head, he was determined to keep his composure. The success of the whole organization had always hinged on his self-confidence and constant composure. He also knew, however, the price of failure in this matter. The secondary gland he had developed was only a precaution, a formality. But because of some abnormalities in the gland itself, he specifically instructed the medical team not to use it under any circumstances. He would hate to think what would happen if they did. All things considered, the primary gland was the only safe option.
The stresses that accompany such thoughts were bringing on a feeling that was quite unfamiliar to Ace: a feeling that he was losing control. So uncomfortable was the feeling that he decided to direct his mind elsewhere. “I don’t want to perpetuate the myth that I am nothing more than a evil-hearted crime lord. You might not be fully aware of all the concessions I’ve made in your favor over the years. Even when you made it very clear that you wanted out. Several ways of dealing with you at that point were presented to me, but I disregarded them all. I merely took your memory, instead of your life. No, I’ve proved myself to be far from heartless. I was initiating Project Twelve, putting many years and many more dollars into it, while the whole time the key to it all lied in the body of a man who didn’t know of it’s existence. You can imagine the risks we accepted; all because I knew we couldn’t remove the gland without killing you. But over the years as technology improved, so did the odds of you surviving the final operation. So the time was nigh anyway. I can put it off no longer.”
Johnson continued down the hall, winded but driven. He was just around the corner from the vault when he got a call on his walkie-talkie. The speaker was brief but sounded nervous as he said “Sir, as of two minutes ago, we lost Twelve.” Johnson stopped in his tracks. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you telling me that he’s dead?” there was a short pause on the other end of the line. “no sir,” the man said hesitantly, “that’s not what I meant. I’m afraid it’s much worse than that.” Johnson immediately understood, and as of that moment his concern was no longer Ace’s welfare. Eleven’s rampage was light training compared to this new problem. They had enhanced Twelve in ways that they could have only dreamed of in the early days of Project Eleven. And with the abnormalities in the gland…there was no way to prepare for his coming. Johnson could only stand there in the hall, waiting. That is, he COULD have stood there waiting, but he chose not to. Instead, he headed for an emergency exit, which was never far.
After Ace had been standing there for about ten minutes, there was another knock at the door. This time, however, the person let himself in. it was a younger agent that seemed to have run all the way there. “Sir,” he said as respectfully as possible, “we have to go, there’s been a problem.” Noticing the urgency in his tone, Ace nodded his head. He would have to leave Eleven for the moment. But not before saying one last thing. He got closer than ever to the body, so as to notice any movement in the expression, even though the brain monitor showed that he was incapable of making any human expression. But determined to say one last thing, he said, “I guess you’ve been wondering about your wife. Well, I think its only fair that I tell you what happened. Her plane did indeed go down in the sea, as you already know. She was the only survivor. That was no coincidence, however. Actually, we arranged that whole trip to some extent. I think that deep down, you lack a will to live that was yours when she was with you. That was what we were going for, and we used it to our advantage. I have found that it’s much harder to kill a person that wants to live.” He inserted a dramatic pause here, but was somewhat disappointed, remembering that he would get no response. The young man took this opportunity to again remind his chief, “Sir, we REALLY have to go. There was a big problem with Twelve…”, but Ace just raised his hand and continued. “your wife is fine, I assure you. I dare say she’s happier than ever. As a matter of fact, I believe you witnessed it yourself just recently, ironic, isn’t it? We married her to one of the Agents to keep an eye on her. The groom was assigned to Project Eleven for years, and his job was to keep you blissfully ignorant of everything until we were ready. But he failed in that mission, so we reassigned him to your wife. Their relationship has never become intimate, or even close, which might have been some confusion to her, but it’s for the best. We keep him busy for whole weeks at a time to ensure that.” Ace ignored yet another plea from behind him. “You see, she had to live. I always prepare for the unexpected. I thought she might be useful down the road. She is actually part of Project Eleven. But unlike an agent, she cannot be reassigned once the project is done. She must be disposed of, for right now she is taking up more of my resources than she is worth. And it seems that we are now in the last hours of Project Eleven. One phone call will seal her fate.” He started towards the door, and then raised his hand as if he forgot something. “You know,” he said, “now that I think about it, Project Eleven is over already. It’s accomplished, considering that Twelve is ready in surgery, and we have you in the vault, which NOTHING can break out of. So I guess now is a good time to tie up all the lose ends, and I know which one will be first on my list. A very attractive lose end, but a lose end nonetheless.” Ace, now satisfied, turned and left. The younger man just shook his head, appalled at his boss’ heartlessness. But he didn’t dare say anything, especially since in just a matter of seconds he would have to pass on some very unpleasant news to him.
When Ace finally heard the news, his yell was heard across the building. After chastising the poor young man for delaying him, he immediately saw what had to be done. Over the loudspeakers, he ordered an emergency evacuation, meaning that all in the facility were to make their way to the exits. He, on the other hand, had the same idea that Johnson had just minutes earlier; to go to the emergency tunnel, the safest and quickest exit. Since the facility was underground, going to any of the other exits in an emergency would be a bad idea if you had a choice, for every second counts. The tunnel was reserved for higher officers, the only ones who knew about it. So Ace made his way to the tunnel, all the while ignoring the cries from the men inside the vault. He assumed they had heard of the danger and wanted to be let out, but he knew they would be safe inside the vault. Of course, one could argue that he just didn’t care, but whatever the motive, the result was the same.
A short time later Ace arrived inside the tunnel. It was a large cave-like passage, with a magnetic-powered trolley inside. The tunnel went back for about a half-mile, then connected to another public tunnel. Ace stepped onto the trolley, only to find several people were already there. He looked around to see the Chief Medical advisor and his assistant, Agent Johnson, and the head of security for the facility. Aside from agent Johnson, they all seemed quite flustered, and all tried to speak at once to explain the situation. Ace quickly silenced them all, and then turned his attention to the medical advisor. “how did this happen?”
“I don’t really know sir, but it must have been a result of using the secondary gland.” Then upon noticing Ace’s reddening face, he quickly added, “but I think Agent Johnson would know best about that, since he gave the order to use the gland.” Ace spun to face Johnson, who apparently didn’t mind being told on. “the kid was gonna die, Ace. I told you I didn’t want to be assigned to this project, but since I am, I shall act accordingly. It was my call.”
For the second time that day Ace slapped his forehead. “You had no right to put the lives of me and my agents in jeopardy like that! Good grief Daniel, I thought you knew better than this. It doesn’t matter who this kid is or where he came from, his life is not as valuable as ours! Do not allow your judgment to be clouded in this case like you did with Eleven. This is not the first time your foolish decisions and methods almost cost us our lives.” Johnson said nothing. He and Ace rarely saw eye-to-eye, and saying nothing was often the best policy. Besides, they had a bigger issue to deal with. They sat as the head of security walked over and pressed his thumb to a scanner on the vehicle. After a moment, a siren sounded as a large door came down behind them, sealing the tunnel. Then the magnetic trolley slowly lifted itself off the ground, now ready to go. Everyone took their seats, and they were about to leave when the medical advisor stood up. “Wait!” he yelled, putting his hand on the Ace’s shoulder. “We really shouldn’t leave until we are sure that everyone has made it out, sir.” Ace thought about this suggestion for a moment, then shook his head. “Not necessary. There is no reason why they can’t all make it out, there are plenty of exits. The only ones that will still be in there are the men that were setting up in the vault, and they’ll be just fine.” Here Johnson jumped in. “Wait, you left them in the vault?! In that tiny room with…” He broke off, thinking about the words he was about to say. Before he could continue, the Head security officer inserted, “yea sir, that vault may be able to withstand explosions, but can it withstand this kid? I mean…” but Ace silenced him, as well as everyone else who started to murmur fearfully. He looked at Johnson hard. “What were you about to say?” Before the answer could be given, however, the trolley suddenly dropped back to the ground, throwing everyone from their seats. The security officer scrambled back to the controls. After a brief look, he informed everybody “it says here that the power plant for the building, including the backups, has been damaged or destroyed. The electrical is next to the medical wing, so Twelve must be there now.” They all listened to the faint explosions from far off. A second later, the lights went off. “don’t worry,” the security officer said calmly, “the tunnel lights have their own backup power.” And sure enough, faint red lights on the walls of the tunnel turned on. This was little solace, however, and the assistant medical advisor voiced everyone’s fears. “We’re stuck!” the younger man whined, still sprawled out on the floor. The elder Medical advisor pointed out they could just walk the short distance down the tunnel, and they all agreed that it was their best bet. Johnson was the only one to object.
“What if he gets into the tunnel? We’d be helpless.” Ace gave what seemed to be a simple answer. “For one thing,” he said while climbing out of the trolley, “that door is made of six solid feet of tempered steel, and it’s 5 times stronger than the door on the vault. And secondly, twelve’s on the other side of the building, and doesn’t even know about the tunnel.” Johnson shook his head. “No,” he said, “but Eleven does.”
This time no explanation was necessary, for all present understood. They stopped in their tracks outside of the trolley, dumbstruck by the new possibility. And all five heads turned as one at the sound of one, two, three footsteps. “Someone’s coming down the stairs,” somebody announced. Everybody looked at Johnson, but he had nothing more to say. The footsteps continued, coming closer and closer, until they finally stopped. The resulting silence was too much for the young assistant advisor, who suddenly took off down the dimly lit tunnel, yelling as loud as he could. The rest didn’t even flinch, but stood unmoving, waiting. Then a banging begun, an ear splitting banging on the door. This sent the two other men into a panic, and they started begging Ace to leave. But he would not move, and neither would Johnson. They both had a overpowering urge to see what was on the other side of that door, and they weren’t going anywhere until they saw it. So it went, that they all stood there as the door slowly changed shape with every successive bang, all while the explosions and thunderous crashes continued in the background. Ace couldn’t believe his eyes as the six-foot thick door melted away like sheet metal. And what was behind the door was much more frightening than any noise on earth.
As the man stepped over the felled door, he buttoned up his shirt and tightened his tie. He slowly bent down to tie his shoes, smoothed his hair, and then stepped into the light. Daniel stepped forward with his mouth hanging open, trying to get a better look. It was Jack, otherwise known as Eleven, in a way he hadn’t been seen for many years. His suit was perfectly clean and neat, and his tiepin identified him as a high-ranking Just Cause officer. However, he had the face of a man on a mission, a man you didn’t mess with. He still had the skin of a dead man, but it was quickly regaining its color. His face, however, was a sea of unspeakable anger, and the rest of the men backed even father away. But Johnson stepped closer, and watched as the once red eyes swirled with pure Ethium, making them white from edge to edge. It dripped from his eyes like little white tears, fell from his chin, and made a small white puddle on the ground. Johnson reached up to touch the substance, but like a flash, Jack raised a hand and grabbed his. Yet neither his eyes nor head ever moved, but faced straight ahead. Johnson lowered his head, saddened at seeing Jack this way. but then he raised his head and whispered, “what are you looking for, Jack?” He watched Jack carefully, and even though there was no movement in his features, Jack slowly let go of his hand. Jack then mouthed the words, “my eyes”. Johnson nodded his head and reached into his pocket, pulling out a pair of sunglasses. After taking them, Jack slowly walked forward a few feet. He stopped under an air pipe that went up to the surface. And in one mighty leap, he was gone.
“What was THAT?” someone finally said. “You just let him go?!” was Ace’s contribution. Johnson, or Daniel as Jack knew him, turned to Ace. “You know, he could’ve killed you. He should’ve killed you; he always used to threaten to. That,” he said, pausing long enough to listen to the sound of Twelve destroying everything he touched, “is what Jack used to be. But he’s changed. Apparently even his deepest subconscious thoughts are no longer like yours, or else he would’ve killed us all.” After thinking for a moment, he added, “but something hasn’t changed. He’s looking for something. Maybe this time its something different, but it’s something alright.”
They stood silent, all just grateful that they survived the encounter. The medical advisor was the first to speak. “I don’t suppose that there’s any chance of getting him back, is there?” Daniel shook his head, remembering the last time this happened. “No, we must wait. But not here,” he said, pointing to the gaping hole where the door used to be. So they all agreed that they couldn’t stay there, and started walking down the tunnel. As they walked, Daniel reassured them, “he wont do much damage, I’m quite sure of it. After all, he’s as blind as a bat.” “What?” was the general response from the other three men. Daniel explained, “yea, he can’t see a thing. He had such a large Ethium flow through his body that it was streaming out from his eye sockets. Right now his eyes are bathed in the part-Ethium liquid, and you can’t see through that. Actually, Twelve probably can’t see either for that same reason.” The security officer whistled in amazement. They continued down the tunnel, all the while listening to the destruction behind them in Just Cause Headquarters. Daniel continued. “Realize that Twelve wasn’t hardly trained, and he’s destroying the place blind. Jack did a third of his tactical and agility training blindfolded. Now that he can’t see, he’s almost working at an advantage.” This acknowledgment set Ace off. “If he think he’s won, he’s sorely mistaken. The very first thing I do when we get out of this cave is make the call and get his wife out of my hair once and for all.”
“That’s it!” Daniel yelled suddenly. “That’s what he’s looking for! Years ago it was his parents, and it tortured him subconsciously. That’s who he was looking for the first time. But now it’s his wife, he must be off to look for her, though he won’t find her...” “Yes he will,” interrupted Ace. “Because of something I said in the vault, he probably put two and two together and figured it out. No, I KNOW he’s going to find her,” he said, pulling out his cell phone. “The question is,” he continued, “will she be alive when he gets there?”
“This is Dave Knotts with your W.S.N.Y. eye in the sky on this Monday evening of the 17th. We’re right in the midst of rush hour, if you can call it that. Right now the traffic density is low due to the severity of this blizzard that has been ravaging the city since mid-morning. Since the travel advisories were made after the workday began, we can’t expect the roads to be clear now at the end of the workday. Thus, every driver is taking their life in their own hands, as the snow is 30 inches in some places on the street alone. We are now about to land the helicopter, the storm is getting even worse. In the streets of Manhattan right now we can see many cars, trucks, SUVs, every kind of vehicle you can imagine, stuck in the streets. The same is true with the bridges spanning the Hudson River. All, that is, except the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge has been closed completely due to a felled support line. We’ll briefly fly over the bridge to see how the crews are progressing. As we approach, we’d like to advise all of our listeners that these are not safe driving conditions. Believe me, you don’t want to be out in this. Looking straight down, we can hardly see anything, so no one in their right mind would want to drive through it…Okay, now we’re passing over the Brooklyn Bridge, and we can see that the crews have wisely stopped working on the bridge. But I can assure you that they will open the bridge long before its totally safe to drive on. Okay, that’s all I’ve got for this evening’s traffic. This has been Dave Knotts with your W.S.N.Y. eye in the sky.”
“And we’re out,” the cameraman said as he put down his equipment. “This sure is nasty weather to be in. Let’s get out of here already.” The pilot, cameraman, and reporter all agreed on that. As the helicopter banked and turned toward Manhattan, the cameraman looked out the window. “Man,” he sighed sympathetically, “I guess the workers are still out there, they’ve even got one coming out the top of that bridge tower over there. That can’t be safe.” The reporter jumped to the window to see. “Wait a minute,” he said after a few moments, “he’s not even on the affected part of the bridge, circle around again Mike.” The pilot nodded his head. “Must be a protester or somethin’,” the cameraman suggested, “are you going to call the station?” the reporter thought about this. Ever since he became a traffic reporter, he missed being able to report on real news. Since they were the only things in the sky right then, this was his chance to have a real story all to himself, if he played it right.
He finally responded, “No, we’re not going to call this one in just yet. Whatever you do, though, keep the camera on him.” So they watched, helicopter circling, as the man just stood on top of the tower. Considering the trouble the pilot was having keeping control of the craft, they were all a little surprised that the man could stand upright on top of the tower without getting blown off. And indeed, he was just standing there. After about a minute and a half of this, they were starting to wonder if this was worth them risking their lives in the middle of a blizzard. As the reporter calmly pondered this fact while reclining on the seat, the cameraman jumped up suddenly. “He jumped! He jumped off the tower!”
The reporter rushed to the window, and the pilot almost crashed the helicopter trying to see. Sure enough, the man was no longer on the tower of the bridge. The reporter was getting very excited. “Did you see him jump? Oh man, c’mon Mike, pull around so we can see if he landed on the bridge.” As the helicopter made its way to the other side of the bridge, the reporter jumped from one side to the other, preparing to report on the breaking news story. The cameraman concentrated on zooming in as close as possible to get a good look at the body. None of them were prepared for what followed.
“Um, Dave? You’d better see this.” The cameraman felt uncertain if he should call attention to what was surely a illusion. The reporter, still primping, did not want to be bothered with it, whatever it was. “do you see the body?” he asked impatiently. “Um, well, no,” came the hesitant reply. “Aw, that’s too bad,” the reporter said unmoved, refusing to be deterred. “Well, you at least got footage of him jumping, right?” The cameraman turned to him. “I got better than that.” Well, this finally motivated the reporter to go and have a look. At first he saw nothing, but an enhanced look through the camera showed him what the other had seen: little indentations in the snow below the tower. Upon closer examination, they turned out to be footprints. Two human footprints.
Moments later, they were off, headed towards Brooklyn, following the footprints at top speed. Actually, upon closer examination, they weren’t a trail of footprints at all, but a continuous line, more like the tracks a motorcycle might make. But no motorcycle could drive through two feet of snow. “Oh my god, oh my god!” The cameraman could hardly contain himself. No one was talking otherwise; it was pretty clear that this was something highly unusual, especially since they had not yet found the end of the tracks. Finally the pilot spoke up. “what in the world is this?! We’re going over 50 miles per hour and we still can’t see it…him…whatever! What was that?” but he got no answer, for no one knew. 200 feet below, there was indeed a man, traveling much faster than the helicopter that was attempting to follow him. As the few vehicles still on the road in Brooklyn crawled across the road, the unknown man flew over the knee-deep snow with ease, leaving a neat line down the middle of Flatbush Avenue. Going over, around, and through anything that got in his way, the unknown man was on his way to an unknown destination with a singleness of purpose that nothing could stop.
Meanwhile, not far away, Ace, Agent Daniel Johnson, the security officer, the chief medical advisor, and his assistant all came to the end of the underground tunnel after a short walk. The cave-like passage led to the Holland tunnel, which goes beneath the Hudson River to connect Brooklyn and Manhattan. When the group first entered the tunnel, two trucks were automatically sent to the tunnel to pick them up. So they immediately got in, Ace and Daniel in the first one and the rest of the men in the other. Ace, unable to use his cellular phone in the escape tunnel, now turned his attention back to it. Daniel had other things in mind.
“You can’t do it Ace, I won’t let you!” Ace didn’t even look up from his phone. “Past experience has taught me that you can’t be trusted to make a objective, rational decision. Thus, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t take you seriously.”
“No you don’t understand, we may never stop him this time! Our only chance is to give him this one. Last time he just gave up, which was a good thing for us. But there is no way we can get rid of her now without him knowing about it, it’s simply too late. We can’t risk him being lose in the city.” Ace looked up briefly from his phone to say one thing, “he’s not calling the shots in this little game of ours. He won last time, like a spoiled child that got his way. not again.” And that was that. Daniel knew that he wasn’t going to win this time. He was in a truck that was flying through the tunnel at breakneck speed into Brooklyn. Ace was determined to see this to the finish, and he was far beyond reason. As they spoke, he was attempting to make the phone call that would destroy Jack; not physically, but emotionally. So they rode on, the silence only punctuated by frustrated grunts coming from Ace’s general direction. Much to Daniel’s satisfaction, the Holland tunnel was specially made so as to annoy any cell phone-toting citizens.
Shortly they were out of the tunnel, and Daniel made one more attempt to dissuade Ace from making the call, but it was no use. Ace finally got his call to go through. “Yes operator, connect me to Agent 236 Jim Grace. He’s assigned to Project Eleven…thank you.” He turned to Daniel and gave him a pleased smile. A moment later someone spoke on the other line. Ace quickly spoke back. “Grace, where are you? … Okay, this is very important, so pay attention. Eleven is headed your way right now…as in he’s headed to you at your home…yes, THE Eleven.” Following this statement, a sound much like that of a wounded dolphin could be heard coming from the phone. “Listen Grace, pull yourself together, this is what you trained for! Now, is Jessica there? … YOU know who I mean! Madelyn, you dope! Is she there?…what do you mean ‘NO’?! I specifically told you not to let her out of your sight until we dealt with Eleven! …Okay, okay, but where is she? …Alright, your main concern is to get out of here NOW. Take anything important with you, your house may not be there when you get back.”
Ace sighed deeply as he turned to Daniel. “She’s at the kid’s school.” To Daniel the situation was clear. “Well, we obviously can’t go thorough with it now…not at an elementary school, no way. Right?” Ace seemed to be thinking far too deeply for such a “simple” situation. Then he suddenly started dialing on his phone again. “Not only are we going through with it, but I’m going to follow through personally. To the finish.”
Miles away agent 236 James Grace scrambled to get his things together. There were so many things that fell under the “important” category, but only one thing was of use to him: money. The money that allowed him to live life supporting an unwanted wife and child, while at the same time looking and living like a rich attorney. He went to the wall safe, located behind the only picture of his “wife” in the whole house. He immediately started shoveling the bills into a nearby suitcase. He was quite happy now that his term in the horrible assignment was over. Now that…but he froze. He heard something, something not right. Immediately he took out the small but powerful handgun he always carried, developed and issued by Just Cause. He crept towards the front room where the sound came from with both hands gripping the gun, so that it wouldn’t slide out of his sweaty hands. He was shaking from head to toe as he peeked around the corner to see what was there. He saw no one however, but he did see the front window sitting open. He chuckled to himself as he walked over and closed the window, winter air and snow blowing in. he was back to shoveling his money when he finally asked himself WHY the window was open in the first place. He once again eased the gun out of his belt, now so scared he could hardly see straight. He was starting to hear things even, voices. At first he couldn’t understand them, they were all running together, but they got louder and more insistent until it was clear. Two, no three voices, perhaps more, all asking the same thing: “Where is she?” It started as a whisper, but soon they were yelling and screaming at him, sometimes in unison, sometimes in a confused, chaotic manner. Always asking the same thing, over and over again, louder and louder: “Where is she?” He knew it wasn’t in his head, because the sound of the voices seemed to be bouncing off the walls, coming at him from every direction, creating an eerie echo. After about four seconds of this, the agent lost his mind, shooting all around him, screaming in response, “WHO?! WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!”
On the other side of the city, the two large trucks made their way through the storm at a surprising speed. Ace knew time was of the essence here, and he could not afford to lose any of it. He wasn’t going to admit it, but Daniel was right: every moment Eleven was lose in the city was a moment too long. However, he had his priorities, first things first. The sooner he got this little detail out of the way, the sooner he could start containing Eleven. He had just finished calling for backup to standby just in case anything went wrong. Now they just have to get there. “Who are you calling?” Ace asked Daniel, who had just picked up his own phone and started dialing. He answered, still upset, “I’m going to call and make sure Jim Grace got out of his house okay.” He then turned towards the window as the call went through, wishing not to be in the same car as the maniac who wanted to KILL an innocent woman in a school full of children. He decided not to think about it, which was just as well as Agent James Grace came on the line, screaming hysterically. “Calm down! Calm down!” Daniel had to talk him down to make any sense of his situation. Eventually he had calmed down to the point where he was using syllables and sentences. “You have to come NOW, they’re going to kill me! I’m trying not to tell them but…” “Wait, wait,” Daniel interrupted, “who’s there with you, what do they want?” But it was no use; he was a babbling mess. Ace finally asked Daniel, “what’s wrong with the guy now?”
Daniel sat confused, listening hard. “I’m not sure, here, listen for yourself.” Daniel switched his phone to speakerphone mode so that Ace could hear the chaos. Ace thought it humorous, but Daniel didn’t agree. He said loudly, “shut up, Grace! I’m trying to hear!” The two men sat listening to the noise in the background. Ace spoke first. “It sounds like voices. A few, a woman in there perhaps.” Daniel sat listening quietly for a while before he yelled, “I knew it! Its Jack!” He’s good, he thought. Then realizing the implications of his statement, he added in the phone, “don’t tell them anything! Just get out of there NOW, and get off the phone!” He kept saying this, hoping to shut the frenzied man up before he said something that they might regret. But Agent Grace gave one last statement in his panic, “Is going to get that woman more important than saving me?” That did it, and Daniel knew it. Suddenly everything went silent on both ends of the line. The voices stopped immediately, as a snow-covered Jack fell silent on the front steps of the Brooklyn home. That was really all he needed to know.
Daniel quickly hung up the phone, although he didn’t think the situation could get much worse. Ace waited patiently the few minutes for Daniel to regain his composure and stop talking to himself. Then he cautiously asked, as if not wanting to know, “what’s going on?” Daniel rolled his head until it was facing the speaker. “Well, let it suffice to say that Jack got the information he wanted from your man Grace.” Ace moaned painfully. “He knows where she is?”
Daniel shook his head. “No, I don’t think so, but he knows that we’re going to get her. That’s almost as bad.”
Ace didn’t understand. “does he know where we are?” was his next question. Daniel didn’t answer, but just looked out the window. They were off the main streets now, and the smaller streets they were taking had even more snow than the rest. So needless to say, they were driving at a crawl, which worked out well because it was hard to see two feet in front of you in the storm. Daniel looked up at the sky, or what little of it was visible at that point. He stared at it as if it were about to do something other than litter the earth with snow. He could feel Ace’s inquisitive eye watching him, but he didn’t move. He felt uneasy being involved with the whole plot, especially since he had full knowledge of the situation and what was to happen. But he was in far too deep to get out now. So he sat watching the sky, feeling guilty and hopeful. And then, after but a few minutes, there it was. At least, he thought it was. No, there it was again, for sure that time. A black streak in the sky, on the rooftops. As the trucks passed by building after building, so did the streak in the sky. And he recognized that the black streak was the only thing that could keep Ace from carrying out his terrible plan. So he turned around and said nothing.
“Settle down children, settle down now.” The teachers in Saint George’s Elementary School were desperately trying to quiet the children. There were hundreds of kids in the auditorium of the school, all stir crazy from being stuck inside for so many hours in a row. The school day was long over, but because of the severity of the snowstorm, no one had been allowed to leave, including children, faculty, and staff. Aside from those, there were some who had been there that day, such as some parents that helped monitor the children when they went for walks or other outings. They had just returned from one of such short walks when it started to snow, and no one had left the building since. One of the parents that were stranded there was a certain Madelyn Grace, who continued to make herself useful now by trying to calm the riotous children. Every time she was with her stepson Jimmy it didn’t seem long enough. So she was really quite happy to spend a whole day stuck at school with him. Besides that, she secretly had always wanted to be a teacher.
About ten minutes later they had quieted the children to the point that the teachers could be heard over them. “listen children, I have an announcement.” The principal was insistent, and soon she was convinced that most of the children were in fact listening. “Don’t worry children, this is a happy announcement! Yes, I know its still snowing outside, and we promise to get you all home this evening. But we got a call from an important FBI official just a little while ago who can’t go home either, and he agreed to come down here and see all you children, isn’t that lovely?” The children weren’t sure it was so lovely, but they didn’t have a choice in the matter. As they spoke, the deputy assistant to the director of the FBI, namely Ace, along with Daniel, climbed out of the truck parked in front of the school. Ace believed that a truly good agent shouldn’t have to use an alias. So they walked right in, going past a group of agents that came ahead of them to secure the school. As the two old men walked down the halls and up the stairs, agents fanned out in every direction, checking broom closets and classrooms. Somehow the teachers had managed to clear out the whole school, and Ace started to wonder where they all had went in the few minutes since his call. But he didn’t have to wonder for long, as a teacher waiting for them directed the two to the auditorium. There they were, he thought, with Jessica milling about right among them. Ace was furious. A bubbly principal bounced up to him, saying how excited she was to have him at the school and so on. He interrupted, “wait, why are all the children and teachers in this one room?” She responded that he said he wanted to address the children, to which he yelled “I said no such thing”, which prompted her to ask what he was there for, which was the wrong question. A moment later a horde of agents were emptying the room, the quick way. In less than a minute the room was empty, all except Ace, Daniel, a few agents that were guarding the exits, and Madelyn Grace. Ace was obviously worn from the day’s activity, because he didn’t even take time to explain to her the situation, as he often did in an attempt to show his genius. This time he cut right to the chase. The three of them were standing on the stage, and his voice echoed through the large empty room as he told her bluntly, “Mrs. Grace, I’m afraid you wont live to see better weather.” And that was that. He then reached into his breast pocket and removed two items: a filled syringe and a gun. “How do you want it?”
He got a reaction that time. Surprisingly, the woman looked like she was more likely to fight than cry, and Ace could tell immediately. He just shook his head, “I don’t have time for this.” So he made the decision, picking up the gun. The thought ran through Daniel’s mind to throw himself in front of the bullet, but he assumed that Ace had more than one, and one last time he was forced to realize that there was absolutely nothing that he could do. He just stood by, helpless and unable to help, a very frustrating position to be in. Madelyn didn’t even try to run, as the safety was already off the gun, and the shooter, now taking aim, had the face of a man that did this every single day. So all were still, waiting for the sound to follow. The sound that came was quite unexpected however, and it even caused Ace to pause, much to Madelyn’s relief. A quite whisper of several voices could be heard, echoing around the room. All saying in unison, “Let her go.” Ace did indeed pause, lacking the insight on the eerie voices that Daniel had, but he caught on shortly. He could hardly believe what he was hearing, but he refused to be intimidated. By that time the voices had gotten louder and louder, and for the first time Madelyn looked like she was about to faint. Ace was not as moved however, and he was quick to show it. “It’ll take more than that, Jack! You’ve forgotten who you’re dealing with!” The voices got louder, and there were more of them now. Daniel was just as stunned in awe as Madelyn was in terror. Ace soon got impatient with all of this, and quickly started to pull the trigger on the gun. But before he shot, one last voice spoke, that of Jack himself. Even Ace jumped a little when he heard Jack’s voice rise above the others, saying, “I had so many chances to kill you, at one point I promised to...”
Ace regained his composure, ignoring the statement and concentrating on his aim. Jack spoke again.
“…despite your cruelty,” Ace closed one eye, aiming so as to make the first shot count.
“…And if you take this life today…” Ace kept his hand steady as he pulled on the trigger.
“…you wont live to see better weather.”
Ace lowered the gun, losing his concentration at this last moment. No one mocked him and lived to speak of it. He turned toward the ceiling, waving his gun around for emphasis. “YOU’RE threatening ME?! I MADE you! Right now you’re the one hiding and cowering, giving ME an ultimatum? Do you think you’re the only person who has tried to get rid of me? Mighty nations have joined forces, trying to subdue me! Do you honestly think that I’m scared of YOU? Now I’m going to do this AS PLANNED, understand?” Ace stood there fuming, listening for the reply. Immediately the voices stopped, and the echo reverberated through the room until it fell into silence. Daniel and Madelyn looked around uncertainly, Ace looked around smugly. Until Jack spoke one last time, “I hope for your sake that it’s worth it.”
Immediately they heard the front doors of the school crash open. Even across the building they could hear the thud of heavy feet, and the crash of guards being thrown out the way. Frenzied gunfire could be heard continually, but they could still heard the thuds and crashes came closer. Ace turned back to Madelyn and quickly pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, but his shaking hands would not allow him to hit his mark. He looked at them with a look of surprised betrayal, but continued despite them. The gunfire punctuated the groans and yells of the agents outside, none of which were the object of Jack’s anger. They were fine aside from being bruised and battered, but Ace was to be a different story. Seven, eight, nine shots were fired. The other occupants of the stage had long since ducked and covered, but Ace had no way of knowing that, as his eyes were squeezed shut. Shots flew everywhere as sweat rolled down his face. The tenth shot went into the floor as Ace’s arms went limp. On the other side of the room the Agent loyally guarding the entrance flew forward as the door exploded into a million pieces. And as Jack made his first step into the room, Ace fell to the floor, and once again the room fell into deathly silence.
Epilogue
Jack and Daniel were standing in the storage room backstage in the elementary school auditorium. Neither one wanted to talk, so they sat silent, both sitting on miscellaneous pieces of equipment in the small room. It was awkward for the two men to be now in the same room, as they had just minutes before been on opposite sides of a very serious conflict. But they knew that they had never been enemies, ever since the first day they met. Daniel had been working as a recruiter for J.C., finding the young men that had the potential to be part of the huge operation. Much like Ace, most of his days of being useful physically were behind him. He was in his thirties at the time, and that was old for the kind of work they did. However, he had spent over a decade contributing to the success of J.C., and second to Ace himself, he ended up staying there the longest. It was because of his experience that Ace put him in charge of Jack’s development, a position he was excited about. He did the best he could for Jack, but he soon found out that the job wasn’t as desirable as it seemed at first. First of all he had to train him to do things he himself didn’t know how to do. The scientists assigned to the project had to presume what Jack was capable of, after which Daniel would have to train him do it. This took all of his time and energies, so he would logically ask the same dedication from Jack. This didn’t work out though, as Jack had many influences on him, none of which were good. The biggest one was Ace, who tried to undo everything that Daniel had tried to teach Jack. The most important skill of any agent, whether they’re Just Cause, governmental, or otherwise, is good judgment, and Ace’s association ruined Jack’s. Ace had always had a low regard for human life, and coupled with Jack’s bad temperament caused by the Ethium, Jack turned out to be a warped young man. Daniel was his only real friend for a long time, as was seen when Jack lost his mind and took on the city. After that few even talked to him, and though Daniel kept working with him, he quickly became withdrawn. It wasn’t long before he left completely. Daniel was given the option to head Project Twelve, while a less important Agent kept an eye on Jack. But he chose to stay on Project Eleven, where his duties would solely consist of keeping Jack safe and report on his every action.
Daniel had grown very close to Jack over the years, despite his personality, so this assignment that allowed him to stay close to him suited him just fine. He thought it would get even better when Ace had Jack’s memory erased six years ago, under the guise of a terrorist act. Daniel actually carried out Ace’s order in this case, organizing the intricate operation personally. He always longed to see Jack live a normal life, and without memories of his turbulent childhood and colorful adulthood, one would think he could. That turned out not to be the case, however. It seems that humans are happier knowing their past than having a normal and predictable life. That is, most would rather know where they’ve been than where they are going. In Jack’s case there was no solution, Daniel thought. He had given Jack the best advice he could: to enjoy what he had, and simply lose all desire for things beyond his reach. It may have seemed overly simple at the time, but that was the only way to stop the pain. Either you stop the pain or you live with it, for the rest of your life.
The two men sat in the dark room. Daniel took Jack to a dark room in the school for the same reason that he asked him not to speak. He wanted to make sure that Jack was in his right mind again before he let him utter even one word. So Daniel just sat waiting in the pitch black as the last of the Ethium swirled away in Jack’s eyes. The white fluid glowed somewhat in the dark, making for a strange effect. Like many things that glow in the dark, the liquid absorbs light, and then gives off that light in the dark. It swirled in his eyes for a few more minutes, and then faded away completely. It wasn’t long before he started speaking, and Daniel went to turn on the lights.
“How is Ace?” This was Jack’s first question, and his concern surprised Daniel. “He didn’t make it,” was Daniel’s reply. Now with the lights on he could see Jack’s eyes, now back to their red color, fall towards the floor. Daniel sat back down in front of Jack. “you really care, don’t you?” Jack looked at him for a few moments, and then nodded. “After all, he was my grandfather, right? Perhaps the only family I had left.” Daniel slowly nodded, but thought how different he was talking when he left all those years ago. Back then, Ace was nothing if not a mortal enemy. As if reading his mind, Jack added, “I know how I probably was before, it’s just that…I can’t do it. I can’t kill, I don’t want to kill. When I was on my way here it felt like an out-of-body experience, I couldn’t control myself. But even then I knew I couldn’t hurt anyone. I wouldn’t have hurt Ace, no matter how much he deserved it.”
Daniel smiled, glad to hear this. “That’s a good thing,” he pointed out. “I’m not so sure,” Jack responded, lowering his head again. Daniel said nothing while he explained. “You know who I am…you know what I am. Can you honestly tell me that Project Eleven can be a passive, ignorant guy like me? That one agent in the alley was right; I am like a powerful weapon in the hands of a child. Not only am I always going to be in some kind of danger, but I’m dangerous. If I lose it again…” But he didn’t finish, he didn’t have to. Daniel didn’t really know what to say because Jack was right. The situation wasn’t pretty, and the reality was that Jack was ill prepared for the trials to come. But Daniel didn’t think that he needed to hear that now, so he changed the subject.
“I thought I’d assure you as to your physical condition. First off, could you see during your episode? Were your eyes working properly?” Jack thought for a minute, trying to think back, but then he had to shrug and shake his head. “I don’t remember, really. I just remember going fast, really fast.” Daniel nodded his head, not really expecting a definitive answer. “I believe that you were completely blind for that short time, and that was due to the excess Ethium from your body which was seeping out and covering your eyes. Of course, in that state all your senses are greatly heightened, so the loss of your sight wouldn’t really handicap you too much. But it will be a rare occurrence with you, as will any such episode. It also seems like you will be keeping those red eyes of yours, although the damage that caused them was merely cosmetic. The burns will not affect any of the normal functions of the eyes.” Daniel started to notice that Jack was no longer paying attention. There were no doubt weightier things on his mind.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Allen. That should’ve never happened.” This time Jack responded, asking the obvious question. “Why did it?” Daniel thought for a second. He didn’t have a good answer, so instead he told the truth. “To be truthful, Ace just wanted to send you a message. That’s really the only way to describe it, even though Allen had nothing to do with this other than being your friend. Ace simply wanted to show his power, his influence. That’s all. Now Chester, he was more of a threat, and even though I wouldn’t have taken Ace’s approach to dealing with it, he had to be taken care of somehow.” Jack just shook his head, not appreciating his attitude on the subject. He said, “do you realize how many innocent people were killed in the past two weeks? Two of them were my friends, doesn’t that matter? While we’re talking about it, what happened to Gerald?” Daniel hesitated, then admitted, “I don’t know, I didn’t want to know. Ace took care of him. I don’t know how…” Jack stood up abruptly, cutting Daniel off. Upset, he said, “I’m going home. All this is your problem, I never signed up for this.”
Daniel quickly stood in front of him, blocking the doorway. “Actually, you did.” Jack rolled his eyes, sticking to his first argument. “That was a long time ago, and I wasn’t really given a choice. Either way, things are different now, I’m different. I’m going home.” Daniel stood his ground however, despite the firm answer. But he talked with a gentler tone as he said, “you have no home. You’re the prime suspect in multiple homicides, and even more importantly, you told the FBI that you are THE Project Eleven. You have no home.”
Jack stopped trying to get past the old man for a moment, and Daniel took advantage of the pause to continue. “Your right. You are dangerous, to yourself and to others. The authorities are going to be after you constantly, and there is just no way that you can deal with all this at once, not by yourself. You don’t have a chance unless you let me help you.”
The room remained silent for a few moments. Jack could see that he was in over his head, and he knew that Daniel was probably right. He couldn’t see, however, how he could trust anyone right then. That included the police, the FBI, and sadly, it included Daniel. Jack just wasn’t sure about anyone, so his decision was clear. “I’ll take my chances.” He turned towards the door to leave, his mind made up. But a word from behind him made him look over his shoulder, just in time to catch a small pistol that was thrown his way. he looked at it for a moment, then dropped it on the ground, shaking his head at what he thought Daniel was suggesting. “No, not even now, I wont do it even in self-defense…” While Jack went off on this subject, Daniel picked the gun back up, shoving it in Jack’s hands once more. “Wait a second, you don’t understand,” he interrupted. “True, this gun is for your protection. However, if you really want to fix this yourself, your only choice is to use this. On yourself.”
Jack was stunned for a second upon hearing this. He hadn’t thought that it would have to come to this, he would’ve never considered it. So he stood there, hoping that Daniel was just being melodramatic. Daniel continued, showing that he was very serious. “Now to do this right, you have to go through the mouth, pointing the gun up at a 60 degree angle. You have to use this special gun because the gland is surrounded by a protective plate. If you do it just right, it’ll be very painful, but quick. If you don’t, it’ll be extremely painful and slow. You should probably do it here, the building is still secure.” Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and though things still weren’t clear, he knew that he wasn’t taking this way out. He passed the gun back to Daniel, still saying nothing. Daniel shoved the gun right back, this time just inches from Jack’s face. “Listen, you said you don’t need my help, fine. But your choices are few. The only way you can protect yourself and others is to do this.” Jack still didn’t say anything, realizing that Daniel was absolutely right; he had few choices, and none of them looked very desirable at the time. He simply didn’t know what to say, so Daniel was again the next to speak, with a less patient tone this time.
“Don’t you remember what I told you? When you choose a path, you choose its destination, and when you choose a destination, you must be able to accept it! You’ve already started down one path by opposing Ace. Now you must either let me help you continue your journey so you may PERHAPS reach your destination,” then he waved his gun a little before saying, “or you can end you journey right here. Those are your choices, and your response could affect millions of people, in this city and others. For that reason, if you don’t decide soon I will have to decide for you. And since I can’t make you side with me, it’s pretty obvious what I’ll have to do. It’s my duty.” When still no decision came from Jack, Daniel turned the gun around so it was facing Jack’s head, not yet willing to pull the trigger. Fortunately it was this moment that Jack chose to speak. “How can you help?”
Daniel lowered the gun. “Well, first we would have to totally disband J.C. as we know it, which will remain very strong long after Ace’s demise. I can’t do that myself, and we must do it before we try to remove the gland. But after that objective is accomplished, I can have the gland safely removed, and a small team will make sure you have a trouble free life from then on. How does that sound?”
It didn’t sound good to Jack, but he didn’t say so. “Why do you want to get rid of Just Cause? After all, you are one of them.” His answer was simple: “Not anymore. Its gotten too big for any man to control, it has a mind of its own now.” This answer made sense, but it didn’t make the task of destroying it seem any easier. But at this point it didn’t matter, because Jack had already made his choice, and he wasn’t going to turn back now. Jack asked, “you know about that room that Ace had me taken to?” Daniel nodded, answering, “yes, the vault.” Jack continued, “Yeah. Well, Ace said some things in there to me. Most of it is kind of fuzzy, but I do remember him talking about Project Twelve.” Daniel looked a little nervous after that, and for a minute he didn’t say anything. Eventually he asked, “How much did he tell you?” “Enough,” Jack said. Daniel nodded his head and said reassuringly, “well, you don’t have to worry about it now, the whole facility’s gone. Twelve simply destroyed part of it, and the rest flooded. He was probably the only one that didn’t make it out.” Jack shook his head. “How can you know that for sure?” Daniel sighed, then thought for a moment before answering. “Conviction just isn’t a part of life. I think you’d better take my word for it and forget about Project Twelve.” This didn’t concern Jack too much, but he could hear a certain sadness in Daniel’s voice when they came to the subject. So Jack waited minute or two before he moved to a subject that was bothering him much more. “What will happen to Jessica?” Daniel thought for a moment, as if it had never occurred to him that she was very much involved. “Well, that is where a problem presents itself. What do you want us to do about her?” Jack didn’t answer directly, but just leaned against the wall with a smile. “Tell me about her. Tell me all about her.”
Daniel hesitated for a moment, then said, “Look, we don’t have nearly enough time for idle nostalgia, but I will tell you the more recent events that has involved her.” He sat down, while Jack, though now paying rapt attention, remained standing. “When we were far enough along with Project Twelve, we had to prepare to retrieve our gland back from you. That was easier said than done considering that we were going to risk triggering a violent reaction from the gland. For instance, the gland’s reaction today was probably caused by your finding out that your Jessica was alive. That was the kind of reaction we were trying to avoid those years ago. Ace figured that you’d be easier to capture if you had less to hang onto. So he thought if he could take your wife out of the picture it would weaken your spirit, your resistance, when he made his move. So we arranged for her to go to Africa with her class from the university in late 1993. We planned it during storm season so it didn’t seem unusual when the plane went down in the ocean. Ace made sure she survived, but he also made sure that her memory was erased, her hair was dyed, and other essential details like that. Then we tried to fulfill some of her desires. First off we assigned Agent Grace to act as her husband, and his baby boy as her son. We gave her a big house, plenty of money, and though we couldn’t let her have the teaching job that she wanted, we enabled her to do a little volunteer work at the boys school. Overall, she’s been quite happy.”
This last statement wiped the smile right off Jack’s face. He couldn’t bring himself to feel happy for her, as he probably should have. “Are they really married?” he asked. “Of course she thinks they are,” Daniel replied, “but legally she is still married to you. In reality, all we did was change her name. And not to worry, the two have never been intimate, I am positive of that. We have virtually constant video surveillance on her, and 24-hour audio surveillance. We keep him gone most of the time, and he told her the lack of intimacy was due to a sexually transmitted disease.” Jack couldn’t help pointing out that it didn’t sound like she was happy, but Daniel assured him that for some reason she was. Then Daniel again asked the question he had asked earlier, “What do you want us to do about her?” Noticing Jack’s indecision, he suggested, “What we can do is, after we get some of the important things out of the way, arrange for you two to get back together. It’ll be tricky…” But Jack shook his head firmly to that. Daniel thought his was a rather generous offer, but Jack objected.
“No, that wouldn’t be right. I don’t really know her, and she doesn’t know me. That wouldn’t be right.” Nothing was said for a moment as the two men pondered the situation. “I guess you want Jim Grace discharged.” Jack shook his head. “If I understand you correctly, her personality, her desires, the things she likes--they should all be the same, right?” Daniel said yes. Jack nodded his head, slipped on his shades, and opened the door leading to the stage. A few suited men were still wandering around, putting the building back in order. Madelyn Grace was sitting in the front row of the auditorium with a blanket wrapped around her. She looked very shook up, but was remaining calm. There was an Agent standing near her, but saying nothing. Jack walked up and sat down next to her. She didn’t even look up, so he spoke to catch her attention. “Are you doing better?”
She looked around. “Okay I guess,” she said unconvincingly. Jack put his hand on her shoulder, then with a kind smile said, “well, I’m Agent Nolson of the FBI.” He flashed his badge for credibility. “I know this is a hard time for you right now, but I will need to ask you some questions about what happened here today. Would that be alright?” After thinking for a moment, she nodded yes. Jack responded with a big smile. “Well that’s great. Today these men will take care of you and make sure you get some rest. Don’t worry, they’re highly trained. Then tomorrow I can pick you up and we can talk over lunch.” Madelyn had remained surprisingly calm from the moment Ace stepped into the room. But for the first time since, Madelyn Grace smiled.