Chapter Forty-Three – Broken Seal
“Do you think she’s dangerous?” Brent asked. “Like, if she’s just a paper conduit, we could take her on, right? We managed to mess up Augustine.” “I don’t think it’s the power that makes her dangerous,” I finally said. “I mean—remember that she was killing people and pinning it on Dr. Sims? On Mom? She’s…really smart,” I said, before adding, “And manipulative.”
10k words | 55 min - 1 hr read-time | TRIGGER WARNINGS: mentions of death, blackmail, kidnapping canon typical violence.
They took her.
God, I still didn’t get it—why would they take Reese? What the hell did they want with some 18 year old who hadn't even graduated high school yet?
Unfortunately, Dr. Sims had a pretty good idea. “Theresa Chenevert?” He repeated. He was bent over one computer in the back of Zeke's minivan, gathering as much information as he could on the attack at Linus Pauling while the car jerked around on the interstate. “Isn’t that the girl who went on air to defend you?”
“And Tommy was the one doing the interview,” Dad realized. “They knew exactly who they were looking for.”
That just made me feel so much worse.
She was gone because she knew Dad. Because she knew me, and wanted to do the thing she always did and take up in fights I was willing to just rugsweep away. Taken by some lady Garrett used my throat to name and her insane lackeys because, what, we were childhood besties? We were each other’s date to homecoming? Because she tried to set the record straight when Tommy was spreading lies?
Speaking of Tommy—Brent didn’t seem at all enthused by the idea that he needed saving. “Guy had it coming,” he eventually grumbled after the adults asked some questions about him while trying to formulate a plan.
“Brent.” Dad snapped tersely. Whatever carefree demeanor he had earlier while we were doing the tag had melted away the moment he saw that message burned into Linus Pauling’s courtyard: Do you have any regrets, Rowe?
Dad turned to face Dr. Sims—not that he had to turn far, as we were all shoved in the back of the van as Zeke sped back towards Oregon. “You know if they found any doves?” he asked.
Dr. Sims shook his head. “No,” he said. “From what I’ve been able to compile from news cameras and steal from body cams, there’s no doves. No sign of paper, either.”
Brent threw me a questioning glance before asking, “Uh…why would there be paper? Or…birds?”
Dad sighed, clearly exasperated at having to put the mental effort into explaining to us what was going on. “Remember a week back, when we were going through all of my stuff I saved from Seattle?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember the crazy lady who made the cartoon and tried to frame us all for the murders she was committing?”
“...yeah?”
“That’s Celia.”
Oh.
Honestly, in the fury of the last few days, I’d forgotten about that break where we did nothing but look through old paperwork and listen to old dead drops—to be fair, we’d been through a lot since then, including being attacked by a monster later that same day. And crashing a wedding. And the road trip to Boston. And Garrett.
But now I was able to recall some of what Dad had told me about Celia; “Augustine faked her death to sneak her out of Curdun Cay. Killed some random guard.” Saisei. The one who called Augustine her mother in the email logs.
Mother’s favorite child.
Garrett’s voice rang softly in the back of my mind, as clear as it did when they had thrown me down the rabbit hole. I guess, in a way, we were chasing a rabbit here, weren’t we? And Celia was there. There at that autopsy, there beside Augustine even when Garrett wasn’t. She was the one that Augustine truly sacrificed for, instead of being sacrificed. The one she trusted.
The one who, at the end of it all, decided Augustine’s mission was weak, and left to create this in the eighteen years she’d been dormant. Attack schools and steal children and stuff.
We headed towards Portland nearly nonstop, following the tailwind of Aunt Sia’s motorbike as we raced the sun. A forty-five hour ride barely punctuated with time to use the restroom and eat—though I wasn’t doing much of that. Eating felt impossible as the nausea that accompanied the thoughts of Reese’s fate took me over. What was happening to her? What did this Celia lady even want with my best friend? She barely knew anything! The last time I had talked to her was the day after this all started, and that was almost a month ago.
The last time we talked, because that was my decision. She’d tried to reach out. Mei had said she was worried sick, and she wanted to talk to me again—but I didn’t meet her halfway. I didn’t want to meet her at all, because I felt like they’d be ashamed of what I did in Seattle, afraid to have to tell them what was happening to me.
Now? Now, I might never get to talk to her again.
I had pulled my phone from Aunt Sia’s laundry basket in our hurried packing before we all sardined into the back of Zeke’s van, but I hadn’t turned it on. I couldn’t, because I was too strong willed to actually reach out to people I loved but too weak not to download every possible app they could’ve used to reach out to me and let the notification of their messages haunt me anyways. What if Reese had tried to message something for my birthday or, God forbid, right before she was stolen by Celia and whatever army of goons she’d managed to build?
No. I couldn’t. So it stayed off.
It wasn’t like I really needed my phone on to know what was happening anyways, between having Brent and Dad. I was, unfortunately, well informed. I got to see when the only casualty announced was the school resource officer when Dad was watching a news clipping; I watched the news articles update with pictures of Tommy and Reese from over Brent’s shoulder; and I heard how roughly Dad cursed as Brent and my school photographs joined the news reels beside images from Dad’s speech at the rally, an FBI tip line under them.
I was no stranger to being plastered places—but the media had kept from throwing my face onto the news until now. Brent, though, looked absolutely bristled when a picture from his football coach’s facebook went viral. “Wait, they—they can’t do that, right?” he asked, turning towards Dad. “We’re minors.”
Dad scowled, pulling down the notification tab of his phone so that the time appeared in the top right corner: 2:13 in the morning. “It’s after midnight,” he declared. “You’re eighteen now.” He looked up at the both of us as we all rocked along with the van’s driving.
“Welcome to being a public person of interest.”
Happy birthday to us, I guess.
Dad insisted we get some rest after that, something that felt nearly impossible between the uncomfortable back of Zeke’s van and the knowledge that Brent and I were now a part of some nationwide manhunt. Sleep was a challenge to come by, and for a while, I could do nothing more than watch the landscape outside of the front windshield slowly become more and more familiar. The plains awoke and stirred into hills before rising to momentous heights with a stretch, the impressively tall mountain sides of the Rockies looming over us before coming back down to a height I was more comfortable with. I had never realized how much I had missed their closeness until the slight megalophobia that came with looking up at their peaks settled into my stomach after missing them for so long.
Eventually, I leaned against Brent’s shoulder as he laid back against the passenger-side seat, the rocking van managing to lull me to sleep as we sped our way towards Portland and whatever was waiting for us there.
“Jean,” a voice said gently, trying to stir me awake. “Jean, c’mon. Time to wake up.”
I, admittedly, grumbled something absolutely incomprehensible under my breath before opening my eyes, blinking back the sleep to look at Aunt Sia…and the scene behind her.
The end of the van was alight with the pinks and blues of neon lights, the van doors open to reveal the alleyway we were tucked into as a breeze shot through it, making me shiver. For a millisecond, as I rose from the drool patch on Brent’s shoulder, I flashed back to that fateful day a full month ago; the russians and guns with names that I’d never be able to commit to memory, the pain in my head from being knocked out, the fear and dread and how everything changed in an instant.
But I blinked, and there was Aunt Sia sitting on the edge of the van’s bed, her motorcycle helmet resting on her knee as she undid the strap of her leather glove. “There you are,” she smiled. “You okay?”
I went to rub my bleary eye, instead accidentally whacking the hard resin of the cast against my brow as I glanced around. The only person in the van besides me was a still-snoring Brent. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Around the van with Zeke,” Aunt Sia said with a bob of her head to the left. “They’re waiting for Eugene to call back so we can make a plan.”
I blinked. “A plan?”
Aunt Sia nodded. “Since the government is searching for you guys, we can’t just walk up to your old school and look around the crime scene.”
God, right—we came down here to see if we could find something that would point us to Archangel, a way to find Reese and Tommy. Being on Uncle Sam’s extermination list was going to put a damper in that fact. “So then, what do we do?” I asked, beginning to scoot to the edge of the van bed.
“We’ll have to sneak in.”
Turns out, breaking into a building to look at a federal crime scene was complicated. Who would have guessed?
We were parked about two miles away from Linus Pauling, in the alley of a set of strip malls that had this small Indian restaurant Reese and I would go to after school sometimes. The familiarity of it all stung in a way I wasn’t prepared for; the shadows of a life I once had, the hopes and dreams of a future that felt impossible now…
I shook my head, trying to concentrate on the now as Aunt Sia’s phone rang and she looked up, informing Dad and Zeke, “It’s Eugene,” before answering.
“Hey, you’re on speaker,” she greeted, setting the phone on the hood of the van.
Dr. Sims was huffing slightly, like he had run all the way to Linus Pauling. “Hey—have you gotten the pictures yet?”
“Trying to load them now,” Zeke said, clicking impatiently on the cursor of Dr. Sims’ smaller laptop. “The wifi here is slower than a turtle with nubs for legs.”
But finally, the photos came through, everyone crowding around the driver’s side door to look at the laptop that sat in the seat. “There’s a Homeland Security mobile command center,” Dr. Sims began explaining as Zeke scrolled through the images. A huge trailer, all black and sleek, sat in the parking lot just next to the ticket stand of the football field, misted windows alight. “There’s security that walk the outside perimeter of the school, and drones.”
There it was again—that blackened drone that had stalked Brent and I along the shores of the Puget Sound, only a flock of them, circling the school and going up and down every side street that led to it.
I glanced at Brent—if his expression was any hint, he had the same thought I did. “If you try to go to the school from any direction, they’ll know you’re coming,” I said, looking at Dad.
Dad chewed on his cheek to the point where I was sure I was soon going to see teeth. “So we approach from a different way. The rooftops—” he decided, before Dr. Sims cut him off.
“Probably a good time to tell you there’s snipers on the roof,” he said. “And while there’s not exactly people on the crime scene, they’re walking the uh…those outdoor hallways that look over the courtyard. About three on each storey.”
Dad cursed under his breath. “Okay…” he murmured, before raising his voice to a more audible tone to ask, “What’s the—the camera situation look like?”
“Surprisingly, I only saw thermal cameras on every corner of the school,” he informed Dad.
Brent’s head perked up at that. “Wait,” he interjected. “Like, the outside corners of the school?”
Dr. Sims hesitated. “Yes,” he said, curious where Brent was going with this.
Brent looked at Dad. “Those are blind spots to the school’s cameras,” he said. “They don’t cover the corners.”
Linus Pauling was a nice school but it was, admittedly, also built like a prison; three storeys of tall concrete and plaster walls with tinted windows and chamfered corners. It was those beveled corners Brent was talking about—a yard of space that was entirely hidden from Linus Pauling’s watchful eyes.
Dad quirked his brow. “How do you know this?” he asked.
Brent looked at Dad, his expression slightly deadpanned. “How do you think I got away with smoking for so long?” he asked in turn.
Dad, seeming to decide the whole 'smoking at school' issue was very low on the bar of current problems, simply nodding once before turning back to the phone sitting on the hood, asking, “You hear that, Eugene?”
Dr. Sims made some sort of noise of confirmation, taking a moment to respond. “Yeah, okay, I see the school’s cameras now, too. If they’ve only bothered to cover their blind spots, it means the agents are connected to their security footage.”
“Is that good or bad?” Aunt Sia asked.
“Good. Really good,” Dr. Sims confirmed. “The Feds wouldn’t just put a guard at the school’s camera feed and call it a day. If they’re tapped into the school’s security system, it’s being redirected from their original NVR system, which means I should be able to manipulate the footage for whoever is watching.”
Dad breathed a sigh of relief. “Good, that’s one thing we don’t need to worry about.”
Zeke put a hand on his hip. “Yep. Now just for the drones, snipers and guards. Oh my.”
Dad gave Zeke an exasperated look, but didn’t argue. The command center was just one piece of a large puzzle, unfortunately.
“If I can get control of the mobile command center, we can blind them,” Dr. Sims said. “But the drones still chirp if they sense a Conduit. They’ll need to be taken out.”
“If we can blind them, that’ll be easier at least,” Dad relented. “And once they’re blind, it’s just about climbing the wall to the school and taking care of them floor by floor. Snipers, then the ones on the third storey, then the ones on the second.”
Taking care of them.
I hesitated to even speak up, but managed to interject before anyone else spoke with a soft, “Dad?” He looked down at me and I nervously asked, “You’re not….gonna kill them, right?”
Truthfully, that was one thing out of everything that Garrett showed me that stayed burning in my mind; Dad's glare, his snarling face and how the hatred in his eyes burned when he killed that man at the Seattle marina. Hank something. How could he do it so easily and just walk away? He'd already done it for us once.
I really didn't want more people to die, especially if they were just in our way because it was their job.
Dad sighed, rubbing at a temple. “No, no, that’s—” he cut off, like he wanted to say something else but held himself back. “That’s not what we’re doing. We’ll find somewhere to lock them up—a classroom or supply closet or something. Brent, you can help me with that.” He looked at Aunt Sia. “Willing to rock with me again, Gremlin?”
Aunt Sia nodded and—even through the stress of it all—managed to chuckle. “Was wondering how long it would take for us to get back to it,” she said in turn.
Dad nodded before turning his attention to Brent. “I’ll need you to deal with drones,” he told Brent. “You can fly—they won’t see you coming down from above. Once we’ve dealt with the snipers and you’ve gotten all the drones, you can join Alessia and I.” He then looked at Zeke. “Stay with Eugene and be prepared for anything. You’re…our backup.”
Dad didn’t seem exactly excited to say that, but at least he seemed to put a pin in his problems with Zeke for the moment and let him back in the fray.
“What do you want me to do, Dad?” I asked. “I can go invisible, maybe I can help you wi–”
“You’re staying with Eugene until it’s safe.”
I blinked. What? “Dad,” I tried to plea, but he immediately cut me off.
“Jean, you can’t use your powers. You can’t heal,” he stressed. “Between getting more sick and getting hurt—look, it’s just better if you stay safe. You’ll be with Eugene and Zeke, you’ll—”
“Dad—”
“That’s enough, Regina,” Dad said, his voice gaining just enough bass to make my protests immediately die in my throat. God, I hated how quickly his Dad voice could cut me off. “The last thing we need to do right now is add another child to worry about to the list. You stay with Eugene and Zeke, and once we get everything cleared, you can come join us at the school—understood?”
I couldn’t choose between a sarcastic reply or to hold my head in shame, so instead I chose a simple and emotionless, “Okay.”
So when Dr. Sims confirmed that he had taken control of the mobile command center, I tried my best not to pout as I was plopped into a chair like a petulant child before Dad, Brent and Aunt Sia ran off to save the day without me.
Logically, I knew Dad was right. I could feel the ache in my shoulders, and it wasn’t from the way I slept, though I’m sure that didn’t help. The pain was always there, a nice little needle stab of a reminder that I was broken—and apparently useless in helping save my best friend.
The inside of the mobile command center looked…like nearly everything I imagined some large trailer made to spy on people would look like; a wall that was just row upon row of footage, live recording that was either in black and white or thermal. There were a few grainy pictures, those probably from Linus Pauling’s cameras, and others that dipped and zoomed like buzzards. Knobs and buttons and switches that meant nothing to me were on the wall, on either side of the computer that Dr. Sims had easily hacked into. Zeke was on the side; he had brought Dr. Sims’ smaller laptop upon request and plugged it into something in the wall, using it to override systems and reroute and do other things that…I didn’t really understand.
I watched the same camera Dr. Sims was concentrating on, waiting for a guard to make his round down a hallway where Dad was waiting to ambush him. “Hold…” Dr. Sims murmured, waiting for the guard to get to some point in the screen. “Hold…now!”
The screen distorted slightly, a bend in the corner traveling briskly towards the guard until Dad materialized from it, feet connecting to chest and sending him flying back. Dad was gone in pixels again, materializing behind the man before he could fall on his behind and grappling him.
Dr. Sims turned his attention to a display two screens away. “Squeaks, get ready,” he warned.
Aunt Sia didn’t have powers. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure how she got to the roof, but if her tenacity was any hint, maybe the whole building bent for her in respect; She had grabbed this chain from her bike, one skinnier than Dad’s from history before and wrapped in black, something at the end of it that dragged her pants down with weight when she hid it in her pocket. That weight came out the moment she slipped out of the shadows, a flash of silver wrapping around the man’s neck and yanking him off kilter. He went sprawling sideways, her padded knee connected with his rib cage, then elbow with temple.
Zeke was off by the computer, cursor moving around a roadmap on the mini-computer plugged into the system. “Alright, kid, next one,” he told Brent, talking into the earbud I had loaned him. “You’re gonna go up Vista till you hit uh…Park Place, then go down till you get to the weird place with the little pillar at the Lewis and Clark intersection. It’s hanging around the steps there.”
Brent wasn’t being tracked like Dad and Aunt Sia—at least, we didn’t have a GoPro to stick on his back before he went flying—but Zeke knew where he was nonetheless by how the little blips of light on the map went out one by one, Zeke typing away to track the next drone’s flight path to make sure nothing would tell of us while we were here.
And I was sitting here, on the floor, fiddling with the aglet of my boot and being absolutely useless while they worked.
I think it would hurt less if I got to be the man in the chair, at least—that way, I was still helping. I wasn’t leaving the rest of my family to just work while I sat here twiddling my thumbs. But I was never the tech type, minimally savvy—hell, Brent had to help me hook up my drawing tablet to my laptop. This wasn’t my strong suit. And since I had no suits now, my power-conservation being doctor prescribed…
Well, maybe I was being a child about it all, but it left a sour taste in my mouth.
Zeke turned to Dr. Sims after a bit, saying, “Think we got rid of all the gnats. They doing good over there?”
Dr. Sims watched Dad emerge from a classroom of the school with Aunt Sia—they incapacitated the guards on each floor, Dad using his powers somehow to immobilize them as they locked them away in a windowless science lab. “I haven’t seen proof of anyone else on scene,” he informed Zeke, “I think they’re good. We can probably approach the scene now.”
Oh, finally, something I could actually participate in.
We threw on our coats and walked out into the Portland winter, the wind particularly bad that day as I led the way to the school’s courtyard. At least I had some use here—hey guys, follow me and I’ll show you where the school’s side entrance is!
It was kinda sad.
There was a strange grinding sound as we walked, and I looked up in time to see Brent shed his wings, trying to score some sort of superhero landing and instead stringing out a line of curses when his knee hit the ground with force that cracked the pavement a bit. Zeke chortled as he stood. “Y’know, your dad probably wouldn’t be too happy to hear you swearing like a sailor in a dive bar.”
Brent moved to keep his weight off of his knee, limping in time with the rest of us. “Yeah, well, he’s not here,” he grumbled. I rolled my eyes and snorted at his stupidity and he tried his best not to blush while throwing me the middle finger.
The gate was latched shut, key probably long gone with what all had happened to Linus Pauling, and everyone solved it how they could; meaning, Brent and Dr. Sims used their powers to get to the other side while Zeke and I just stood there awkwardly, the two taking a moment to even realize they had left us behind till the absence of our footsteps clued us in.
“Oh, right,” Dr. Sims said, looking around for a moment as Brent just rolled his eyes at me, probably to repay me for how I treated him moments ago.
“Can’t you just come through?” he asked.
I deadpanned looking at him. “I can’t use my powers, asshole,” I reminded him, voice a bit too sharp for the playful banter he was trying to engage me in. He seemed to catch onto my frustration, simply holding his hands up in mock surrender as Dr. Sims called from a ways away.
“It’s an electronic lock!” He told us, “Just give me a second and I can open it.”
Zeke glanced over at me while Dr. Sims worked, not blind to the frown I wasn’t trying my hardest to suppress. “Hey kid, chin up,” he said, waiting till I looked at him to smile. “Just means you get to be my protégé, now. I’ll teach you every trick I’ve learned that’s kept me alive during this mess since I started running it with Cole.”
I offered him a weak smile and a muttered, “Yeah…” in turn. I knew he meant well, but it…wasn’t the same, when I theoretically should have been able to do more.
The gate opened either way, though, Zeke and I walking through it before Dr. Sims closed it as much as he could without letting the latch actually lock once more. Dad and Aunt Sia came bounding down the south wing stairs, Aunt Sia with her helmet tucked under her arm as she pocketed the weight at the end of the chain—a simple padlock, I realized, a smiley face blazed into it with a soldering iron. Dad looked over everyone, somehow missing the still-limping Brent to instead ask me, “You alright, Jean?”
“Yeah,” I responded, “Why wouldn’t I be?” It wasn’t like I’d done anything to actually get hurt. I swear, he was waiting for me to just explode into confetti on the spot at some point. It was kinda patronizing.
None of that mattered right now—because now we were in the center of the school, where Archangel had attacked and stolen Reese and Tommy.
It was so weird being back here, especially in the dead of night and after having been gone for a month—and especially with the chaos left behind after the attack. There were still backpacks there, thrown away in the chaos, loose-leaf papers and textbooks abandoned in the snow. There was a pink knit scarf swaying in the branch of one of the skinny elms in the planters at every corner of the courtyard to give it some life, and a jacket caught on the knob at the end of the westside railing.
The real change lay in the proof that there was someone here, an other that caused this dishevelment; the light pole I had seen cracked in half was still lying in the snow, little markers surrounding the bullet casings near it. The dirt in the planter diagonal from the one with the scarf looked like it had been blown out of it by an explosion, twisting vines clambering up the pillar behind it and lacing through the slats of the railing of the second floor breezeway. It used the railings and their supports like lianas, reaching the third before climbing to the rooftop and embedding their briars in the lining.
“They came in from above,” I said, pointing it out only when Dad looked at me questioningly. He followed my gaze to the vines, the others following suit.
“Probably left the same way too,” Dad hummed distractedly. Now that we were here, there was only one thing he was interested in; he walked to where those words that’ve been plastered on every newsreel and article were written into the ground, leaning down to look at the letters that were half my height. His hand shadowed the marks of the r in Rowe, humming to himself. “It’s carved in,” he said, looking over his shoulder at Dr. Sims and Aunt Sia. “Not just burned,”
We all joined him, Zeke whistling low and Brent and I sharing a look of surprise—because the words that looked like smoldering scribbles on screen on the way here were actually burned so deeply into the ground that the concrete still crackled with the hit, hissing in the cold and melting any of the snow that had tried to settle there before we got here. “Damn,” Zeke said, almost sounding impressed. “What the hell kind of power can do that?”
Even Dr. Sims seemed surprised. “That’s not very….Celia-like,” he pointed out, looking at Dad.
Dad immediately seemed tense. “Yeah, well, neither are the vines and whatever cracked that pole in half,” he pointed out before standing and turning to face us, crossing his arms. “Means she has a lot of people on her side now.”
Aunt Sia stepped over the letters, looking down at them as she turned slowly, taking stock of how they were scratched into the concrete. “This looks a lot like the attack on Curdun, when Augustine was broken out,” she observed. “Same sort of burn marks.”
“Which means….what?” Brent asked, glancing around. “She has a partner in crime?”
“Or a lieutenant she trusts to do what she needs,” Dr. Sims said, glancing at Dad. “She wouldn’t trust many people to have her back like that.”
Dad was still looking down at Rowe in large, scratchy letters before he shook his head. “We aren’t going to find any answers if we don’t find whatever clue she left behind for us to follow,” he pointed out. “She wouldn’t do this without a reason. We need to start looking around.”
The adults dispersed, Brent and I sort of hovering uselessly in the center of the courtyard as we watched the four of them begin scrounging around for…something. “Celia,” I hummed. “What was it she always left behind? Cranes?”
“Doves,” Brent corrected as I fell in step at his side as he walked over to the vines. Steel overtook his lower arms and he grabbed the thicket by its canes, shaking. “Damn, that’s pretty sturdy,” he hummed, impressed.
I looked around at the dirt, the tossed up mulch and rock that had scattered after the vines shot out of the planter. “Do you think she’s dangerous?” Brent asked suddenly as he climbed onto the planter to take a chance at seeing if the vines could hold his weight. “Like, if she’s just a paper conduit, we could take her on, right? We managed to mess up Augustine.”
I sat on the planter’s edge as he tried to find a place to put his feet, looking down at the ground. Did I think we could take on a paper conduit easily? Sure. Dr. Sims’ power was insanely strong, Dad was Dad, and Brent’s power was essentially the trump card in whatever messed up game of rock, paper, scissors fighting her would bring. I…I couldn’t do much anymore, but even if push came to shove—paper dissolves in water.
But that really wasn’t what made her a good villain the last time Dad confronted her either. And Garrett…well, they seemed sure she was a force to be reckoned with. “There’s no time to dawdle,” they had said, with my voice.
“We face the end.”
“I don’t think it’s the power that makes her dangerous,” I finally said. “I mean—remember that she was killing people and pinning it on Dr. Sims? On Mom?” I scuffed my boot in the dirt, thinking about those moments when I was with Garrett in their headspace, with no sense of where I ended and Celia began. “She’s…really smart,” I said, before adding, “And manipulative. I mean, if she’s got all these people helping her…”
Brent shrugged, and I’m pretty sure it was because the guy was more concentrated on finding a foothold in the vines than actually responding to me. “Augustine had the DUP,” he pointed out, slipping the end of his shoe in a gap. “A weird thirty-something year old lady with a bunch of lackeys isn’t something Dad can’t ha—”
He didn’t get to finish the sentence; the moment he put his full weight on the vines, they shattered like glass, splinters spraying as he slammed back into what dirt remained in the planter with a sound similar to a giant balloon deflating.
I burst out laughing as Brent wheezed, trying to suck air back into his lungs after hitting the ground with force like that. God—leave it to the dumbass with metal literally laden into his muscles to see if something so light could hold him up. Brent was always a curious one, but never had self-preservation when trying to prove a hypothesis. It’s gotten him into a lot of shit—the security room of the mall, the nurse’s office, the ER with his arm bone sticking out of his skin.
“Hey!” a voice called to interject on my cackling, Dad standing by the wrought iron of the west side entrance to the school. I hadn’t noticed it before this moment, but the bars were bent, like something had physically pulled them apart to make a gap. Dad’s hands were out, and he looked at the two of us with that face—the one that makes you freeze when you’re trying to do something bad, like take a McDonald’s tray down the slide at their playplace to see just how fast you could go down it. “We’re trying to be discreet here?”
He turned with a sort of scoff, Brent and I throwing each other a look as he sat up and brushed off. Dad wasn’t one to snap, especially at something I knew he’d find hilarious any other time—at least, that’s what I kept repeating to myself so I didn’t feel bad about it. “Must be stressed,” I muttered under my breath as I tried to help Brent up. Tried being the keyword, as I nearly fell when he tugged.
Brent stood and I helped him brush the grit off of his back, shaking it out of his hoodie as he looked up at the vines that still straddled the second and third floor. “Anyways,” he said, brushing off his chest. He shrugged. “Dad’s taken on a lot more than some chick and her flying monkeys. Just means more powers for him.”
I couldn’t shake off the feeling that Brent was being way too blasé about this. But then again—he’d never been inside Celia’s head.
Dad didn’t lose that stress the longer we were there—in fact, it got worse and worse the longer he looked around with no sign of Celia or her origami or anything. “Goddamnit!” he eventually cursed, making a fist and moving like he was going to hit the concrete pillar before deciding otherwise, instead bringing it up to press the balls of both palms against his eyes. “We’re getting nowhere—”
Aunt Sia immediately tried to calm his nerves, tone placating as she said, “We just need to keep looking, it’s—”
“We haven’t found anything yet, Alessia!” Dad responded, hands flying off of his eyes to motion out. He blinked a few times, trying to clear the stars from his vision as he added, “There’s not even a sign she was here in the first place—”
“But we know she’s involved somehow,” Dr. Sims interrupted. “Garrett wouldn’t lie.”
“Not about this, at least,” Aunt Sia muttered under her breath, looking around.
Dad looked at Dr. Sims. “If it was just—” he waved vaguely at the ground, “—here, what’s the likelihood that it would’ve been picked up and categorized as evidence?”
Dr. Sims let his head fall side to side, debating his answers. “I’m not sure,” he finally admitted. “The only reason anyone knows about the doves in the first place was because you used it as evidence when they were trying to pin General Mortimer’s death on you. But—that was the General of the military. If anyone remembered that fact—”
Dad’s outward groan sounded more like a growl, and he looked like he wanted to sing a slew of curse words—at least, before Zeke held up a hand. “Okay, hol’up,” he said, silencing everyone else. “If this Celia lady is so conniving, she’d know they’d look for evidence to where these two kids were taken. I think we’re looking at this wrong.”
Dr. Sims cocked a brow. “How so?”
“Well, if I was some evil mastermind that had a good eighteen years to plan how to mess with you,” he said, motioning to Dad. “Then I’d make it significant but make you sweat about it. Leaving a love letter in the middle of the ground here is a sure way to ruin the game. Either some agent picks it up, or the snow could ruin the paper.”
Dad, who at first looked annoyed, became more and more pensive the longer he spoke. “That’s…not a bad point, actually,” he hummed in agreement, nodding absentmindedly.
Aunt Sia crossed her arms, and I wasn’t sure if it was just to do so or to fight off the sudden breeze that had kicked up—a snow storm was close, I could feel it in the air. “So where would she leave it, if she wanted to make a statement but also keep the dove from being ruined?”
Dad chewed on his cheek. “Could still be somewhere in the school,” he said, before glancing uncomfortably at Brent and I who were watching this all from the sideline. “She knows I have children—she could’ve kept it connected to them.”
“COLE isn’t out of the question either,” Aunt Sia added. “It’s a few miles away, but—leaving the dove in the ruins after the first attempt to get you to come out and fight? It’s not far off from a Celia-like statement.”
Dr. Sims looked really uncomfortable at suggesting the next possible location. “How…how far is your old home from here?” he asked tentatively.
Dad looked at Dr. Sims for a moment before cursing. “Alright,” he decided, looking at Brent and I. “Brent, take Dr. Sims and Zeke—Jean, you’re with me and Alessia. I want you guys to help us look around, show us anything that might be important enough for Celia to use to make a statement.”
And there we were, giving them what was practically a tour of the school to find some serial killer's welcome back letter.
Brent, realistically, probably had a lot more places he could show them; the trophy case was in the main hall of the first floor, the entrance to the gym had even more trophies and a banner with their face from winning state. Me? I had half a mural in the Arts and Culture hall and a clay diorama display of Mesopotamia in the library. Most of my contributions were outside of the school.
But that thinned out the possibilities, at least.
Even more so when I found where the dove actually was.
While the outside of the school just looked like a giant brick of concrete, the inside was actually nice; the courtyard came in from the walls, every corner more spacious to both hold a stairwell and entrances to the wings of classrooms on that level. I had begun to lead them to the Arts and Cultures wing, the hall of band rooms and black box theatres and art galleries, when I froze, stopping so abruptly Dad ran into my back.
I left Dad and Aunt Sia behind as she helped him recover, ignoring the, “Jean, what’s wrong?” to run towards it. I knew that bag; powder purple, small flowers from the fake flower section of the craft store sewn on in random bunches on its front. We always took two miniscule buds from the displays, a little show of thievery, and sewed them onto random things; clothes, blankets. The biggest victim to our attacks was her backpack.
Reese’s backpack.
It looked like it had dropped suddenly, the flap that came over its face open, one of her journal’s sticking out of the backpack’s maw. She must’ve fumbled it while reaching in for something. Or it was ripped from her when she was kidnapped, a terrible voice in the back of my head nagged. But there were no signs of a fight, at least; no blood in the snow, nor on the bag as I picked it up.
The flap fell back as I lifted it, the journal slipping back in and something crumpling under its weight. And I wasn’t sure if it was foolish hope, or something stupid that just drove me inside—but I immediately began rooting inside of it for the source of the noise in the strange, stupid hope that it was something for me. Like she saw Archangel begin to descend on the campus and decided the best thing to do was to write me a note—but rationality means nothing in hope’s wide eyes.
Instead, as I rooted in and grabbed the edge of what was being crumpled by the journal’s edge, what was in my hand making it burn when I realized what it was.
I almost dropped it. The moment I saw the art, I nearly dropped it like it was an IED. Instead, I just called out, “Dad!” despite him already being a step and a half away from joining me, turning and holding the dove like it was acid eating away at my hand. “Dad, it’s—Reese’s backpack, it was in the—“
Dad took the crumpled dove out of my hand, already moving back towards where we came to find Dr. Sims as Aunt Sia moved to comfort me, her hand settling on my lower back as I held Reese’s backpack. There was something about finding what was practically a ransom note in her bag that had me spiraling; everything suddenly felt really really real. Reese was gone. No, worse—Reese was in the hands of some crazy lady that’s had it out for my family since before I was born, and was now taking it out on people who were barely involved. This Celia lady targeted Reese, or at least knew her well enough to leave her goddamn ransom note in her backpack. “Come on,” Aunt Sia murmured gently in my ear as Dad called for Dr. Sims somewhere far away.
The art was, arguably, some of the best I’d ever seen.
Unlike the bits from before I recalled from looking at Celia’s art, this page was a single panel; in the center stood a bird, its shining armor almost as eye-catching as its two heads. The plated armor on it contrasted the bird’s chimera coloring—its white side of its body was adorned in black, tapering grey to white the further the armor was on its black feathers. Some white streaked in the black, black in the white, salt and pepper from age reflecting in its older face.
Dad.
Fukushū.
And if there was any color to the artwork, I was sure the two-headed bird would look way more familiar, the same shade as the Conduit emblem he had painted so long ago.
The bird’s head—both of them—were looking up, eclipsed by a shadow far beyond where the panels could see—but the wings, the horns, were familiar. That had to be Archangel, or whatever its anthromorphic equivalent in this story was. That wasn’t what was interesting.
What was interesting were the two birds sheltering behind Fukushū.
One was large, like him, though different; where Fukushū looked like a raven with a strange case of vitiligo, this one was...sharper? That didn’t feel like the right word, but it was; the feathers of its tail were shaped like cinquedeas, white zipping down the middle of their grey. It had a gauntlet on its wrist much like Fukushū, and the scowl set in its bordered facial markings went all the way up to the ruff on its head, eyes as dark as its face.
The other was smaller, slimmer; it matched in grey with the other, but had none of its sharp edges and rough glare. It looked scared, the gorget of the shoulder armor set looking like a thick collar on the small bird. It had ruffs as well that came down, curling around its lighter, whiter face.
The one thing that connected these two birds were bolts that shot across their eyes; on the larger, black-faced bird, a white streak; on the white-faced bird, black. They were more youthful, spry and fuller, standing behind Fukushū.
Fukushū had his arms out, shielding the young birds from the shadow that loomed above them, protecting them from the attacker. Fukushū and his fledglings.
Dad and us.
The theory was confirmed when Dad turned the page over, beginning to read a haiku on the back: “‘Our paths cross again; New players enter the game; Old habits die hard.’” He glanced up at Dr. Sims and Aunt Sia with a stressed, exhausted look before looking back at the back of the dove to continue reading. “‘Delsin, Delsin—didn’t you learn anything from before? We can’t run from what we are. Who we were. You and I have inherited too many burdens, too many wrongs, to ever truly be free.’”
Inherited. That phrase Garrett told me, they learned from Celia—a life is made of wrongs we inherit. Who said Dad inherited his position? Why did it have to be him? “‘We’ve been apart for far too long. And while I originally believed I would have to dig you out of whatever hole you’d be put in after Mortimer’s death, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who’s well-versed in slipping out of the noose just before it tightens. And I suppose it’s nice to see that, even through it all, you still tried to help the Conduits from behind your own mask—but it wasn’t enough. It will never be enough, so long as we ask for acceptance. You’re making the same mistakes Augustine did long ago.
“‘Time’s up, Delsin. There’s far too much to catch up on, and even more to learn. And you have quite a lot to learn. This Pandora’s box was opened long ago, and yet far after when we began suffering from its whims. We aren’t the first to walk this road, and we won’t be the last. Perhaps Eugene can help you find the burrows we’ve hidden in before, and those of the First Sons. You found the one in the desert, our hidden location all the way in Australia—even the cave that witch Dubois hid in in Lozère. But you’ve yet to find them all. Put your nose to the ground, Delsin. Sniff out the blood in the water, and come learn everything you’ve missed.’”
Dad looked up, scowling hard. “There’s something here too, a written-out link. Looks like it goes straight to the DoD. I want to go back to the command center, see if—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence.
Dr. Sims’ phone beeped, and he moved to fish it out of the pocket of his long coat, immediately unlocking it as the alert refused to let up. “Something tripped the alarm system,” he said, looking up and glancing around the frozen group. “We need to go, now.”
That got us all to move.
Dad pushed Brent and I forward, only pausing to drain some concrete from the message left in the courtyard before jogging to catch up, passing as he led the way to the gate. “What the hell tripped the alarm? I thought we were covered?”
Dr. Sims was briskly walking while looking down at his phone, tapping away. “We should be,” he agreed, voice tense. Dad yanked open the gate as Dr. Sims clicked something and said, “Strange…a drone on the perimeter of the investigative barrier was activated by a Conduit’s presence.”
Dad froze, hand on the gate as he processed Dr. Sims’ words, then looked over his shoulder at Brent. “I thought you got rid of all the drones,” he said.
Brent held up his hands in mock surrender. “I did!” he defended. “I took out all the ones Zeke sent me to!”
Dad rounded his stare on Zeke, something a bit more predatory settling into them during the movement—but Zeke didn’t rise to it. “I kept the furthest drones active in case someone comes for us while we’re here,” he said. “There’s no knowing if Archangel put some sort of alarm down for when you eventually came knocking.”
Dad looked between Zeke and Brent and back again before growling out in frustration, opening the gate.
If the drones left to guard the perimeter were still live, and Dr. Sims was informed someone, a Conduit, activated their alarms—then who’s to say it wasn’t Archangel? Dr. Sims seemed unable to access the live footage without his laptop, only able to get notifications from the ping its alarm caused, looking up to say, “300 feet and approaching fast.”
Dad didn’t waste time with running; he squared his shoulders as concrete grew from nowhere, rock shoulder pads settling on his tense form. Everyone else seemed to take the hint; Dr. Sims shoved his phone in his pocket, his strange circular, angelic like gauntlets appearing on his forearms. Aunt Sia took out her chain, Zeke his gun, and Brent slotted himself just in front of me as I sat in the back of the pack like a useless invalid.
For a moment, the air stilled as we all waited for the approaching person that tripped the alarm. Could it have been Celia? Her lieutenant? Another pack of soldiers?
Well, it was none of that; lights illuminated us, brilliantly blinding and forcing us all to wince and look away (save for Dr. Sims, who was somehow still able to look straight ahead). I covered my eyes with my cast-covered hand, tired squealing as the vehicle in front of us swerved and came to a quick stop, engine turning off.
It wasn’t a government car or an armored vehicle; hell, it wasn’t even a nice car.
But it was a very familiar Honda Accord with a small dent in the back fender, all but one door in the car opening as some very familiar faces all bolted out of the car.
“Guys!” Mei exclaimed, slamming the driver’s side car door shut and pushing her way past Zeke to bolt straight for Brent, hands going around his waist to hug him. Brent froze with his hands up in the air like he was at gunpoint for a moment, seemingly shellshocked at the fact that his crush was there hugging him before he cracked, an arm coming down and around her. Dom came around the car from the passenger’s side, Cat fighting her way out of the center of the backseat as Dad’s concrete sleeves disappeared and he turned towards us, scowling just as sharp at the rock that had been rotating around his arms moments before.
Zeke, upon seeing how Cat froze in place, wisely lowered the gun still aimed at the old Accord. “Who, uh…” he glanced at Dad as the illumination from Dr. Sims’ gauntlets went off. “Who’re they?”
Mei pulled back from Brent, glancing between him and I as she began rambling. “Thank God you’re here,” she said as Cat latched her arms around me, hugging tight. “I was—it was terrifying, they just came in and—the walls were shaking when they—”
They took Tommy, Cat signed when she pulled away from me, Tommy’s name sign so frantic it would’ve been misspelled if it was written. No one knows where he is, the cops are saying—
“We’ve all been worried about you guys,” Dom said, the most present I’d ever seen him as he dapped up Brent. Mei, free from his grasp, immediately threw her arms around me.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” she murmured as she pulled away, that terrible pitying look in her light brown eyes.
I hated when people look at me like that.
There was a very exaggerated throat-clearing behind them and well all paused, turning our attention to Dad—who did not look happy. He was staring at us—specifically Brent and I—with a critical gaze. “What are they doing here?” He asked in that firm lawyer-ly voice, like we were on the bench and he was digging for the truth.
Brent and I glanced at each other, wide eyed—but neither moved to apologize first. I mean, I definitely didn’t tell anyone where we were, my phone wasn’t even on, and Brent looked just as surprised—but before either of us could begin pleading our innocence, Mei spoke.
She broke from me, turning to face Dad. “Mr. Rowla—Rowe—sir,” she decided, holding up her hands placatingly. There went Mei, always the peacekeeper. “It’s my fault. Brent told me you all were going to try to help Theresa and Tommy and I saw you were all back in Portland and—we were really worried. We wanted to see them.”
Dad arched his brow. “You saw them?”
Mei nodded, faltering slightly under Dad’s critical stare. “Yeah, I—when he told me he was going to fix this, I assumed you were heading this way so I kept tracking his bitmoji’s location on—”
“His what?” Dad growled out before his predatory glare landed on Brent. “I thought I told you not to use anything that could track your location!”
“I didn’t realize it was still on—” Brent immediately began to defend.
Off on the side, Dr. Sims moved to stand closer to Aunt Sia. “I don’t understand,” he murmured, looking at his phone as he clicked through the mobile command center’s servos he was still connected to. He showed Aunt Sia the phone screen, continuing, “The drone’s alarm tripped because of a Conduit.”
“See, that’s why I don’t carry around one of them smartphones if I can help it,” Zeke quipped, patting the pocket on the strap of his sling bag as Dad and Brent argued. “Too easy for Big Brother to look over your shoulder.”
“Zeke, I don’t think that’s very helpful right now,” Aunt Sia cautioned, more a warning than anything else—especially when Dad’s hands clenched off on the side as he waited for Brent to respond.
“Holy shit, that’s Eugene Sims,” Dom whispered, looking at me like I should’ve been just as surprised.
Over the chaos of everyone speaking at once, a steady staccato beeping grew closer and louder with every passing second. A blue light appeared at the edge of the parking lot and quickly zipped towards us, the Homeland Security drone materializing in the darkness. Its beeps grew in tone as it hovered close, like a bloodhound yowling for its owner to come take their next kill.
And kill seemed to be the biggest concern for Dr. Sims at the moment, who was poking at his screen in fervor. “The alert triggered something,” he informed everyone.
“What do you mean?” Dad asked, lowering the knife hand he had trained on Brent to move, looking over Dr. Sims’ shoulder.
“I don’t—” Dr. Sims cut off, turning the phone and typing furiously with his two thumbs. He cursed something under his breath that vaguely sounded like a curse word in a Tolkien novel. “There’s a failsafe apparently—the alarm has to be disabled by someone in the command center with a password and credentials within a certain timeframe or it’ll alert the closest Field Office to send backup.”
Dad blinked. “And how long until the feds get alerted?” he asked.
Dr. Sims grimaced. “Two minutes ago?”
“What is that?” Mei asked, looking up at the drone with apprehensive eyes, backing up. Brent hesitated for a moment before his hand came to rest on her shoulder and pull her closer, slotting her into his side.
Dad groaned out a growl, following Mei’s eyes up to the drone before looking at Dr. Sims. “Can’t you—I don’t know, send it away or something?” he asked him. “Make them chase a ghost?”
Dr. Sims stumbled on his words. “I can—I can try, but it needs a constant reading to follow, they might know it’s a ruse.”
“Maybe they’ll think it’s a false alarm?” I suggested. If they saw the drone was following nothing, maybe they’d just think it was broken?
Zeke shook his head. “They follow RFE signatures,” he informed me. “The tracers can sense a Conduit from a hundred feet away. One-seventy-five if someone is actively using their powers. I kept the perimeter drones active in case something started coming towards us, they were too far to pick up you guys even if y’all decided to have a power-pissing context here in the parking lot.”
Dom leaned over—and down, considering he had a foot on my height—to murmur into my ears, “Does the…Elvis impersonator not have powers?”
“That’s Cole MacGrath’s childhood friend,” Brent answered for me.
“That's who?”
“So there could still be something out there?” Aunt Sia demanded, winding the chain around her hand like a tick.
Dr. Sims’ brow furrowed further, lines appearing on his forehead I didn’t even know could exist on a person as he tapped on the screen of his phone. “I—I can’t redirect the drone,” he informed us, glancing up for only a moment before going back to jabbing at his phone. “I think I’m locked out.”
“Locked out?” Dad repeated, looking between Dr. Sims and his phone. He looked like the only reason he didn’t snatch the phone out of his hands was the fear of his reaction. “What do you mean locked out?”
“I mean that the alarm activated a kill switch on all external nodes. Any tech that isn’t in the field office is dead. I can barely see what they’re doing.” Dr. Sims explained, albeit with a slight attitude of his own.
The drone above seemed to beep louder, taunting us at the fact that everything was quickly going to hell. Dad glared up at the device before commanding, “Brent, take care of that.”
“Delsin, we should go,” Zeke warned.
Aunt Sia slotted herself on Dr. Sims’ other side, looking at his phone. “Are you able to see where the drone first sensed RFE?” she asked, still worried about what initially triggered it. “There could be someone out there.”
Brent moved his arm from around Mei’s shoulders, moving to do as Dad said—but she reached out, grabbing him by the wrist. “You can’t do that,” she insisted.
“Mei, it’s tracking us,” he pointed out.
“It’s government property. You could get in trouble!”
“Delsin,” Dr. Sims said, voice a bit higher than usual as he spoke, panicked. “They just dispatched people. We’ve got about five minutes before we have a bunch of Department of Defense agents on us.”
Zeke cursed. “If we were locked out, that means we can’t use the command center’s computers to look into that link Celia left us,” he pointed out.
Aunt Sia and Dr. Sims were talking to each other, trying to involve Dad in the conversation. “It says the sensor was first activated on Southwest Columbia,” Dr. Sims said, zooming in on his phone.
Dom perked up. “Columbia?” he asked. “That’s the road we took to get here, we didn’t see anything off,” he told Dr. Sims.
“Was there a chance you were followed?” She asked Dom, Mei and Cat, before looking at Dad. “If Archangel knew about Brent and Jean’s friends, they could’ve been watching them, too.”
“I don’t know, I—” Dad pressed his hands into his eyes, moving to pace as he muttered some stuff that I was sure involved regret at being alive right now. The drone above kept beeping as Mei tried to talk Brent out of destroying it and it was the straw that broke the camel’s back—he raised his voice, snapping, “Will someone deal with that goddamn drone?”
Mei was still holding onto Brent, who managed to get one hand out of her grip, moving to shoot down the drone—but he was too late. Something hit it with a sticky slap, the drone teetering hard as its beeps became muffled. The strange white substance crawled over the drone’s surface in veins, an albino symbiote that plastered itself close to the plastic, wrapped itself in the drone’s propellers until they stuttered to a stop. The strain of the restraint on the motors caused them to sputter and spark until it collapsed into a heap on the ground, the staccato beeping drawing off like the faltering sound of a heart monitor until it fell silent.
The weird substance around it hardened, going from silky and shiny to something firm and sleek, the color darkening from a crisp ivory to a dark linen. The color of clay.
The color of wax.
Everyone froze, watching the drone sputter and creak to a stop before looking up at Cat, who lowered her hand. She looked around at the group’s dropped jaws and wide eyes before bringing up her other hand.
We should talk, she signed.
