Isolation

by Kevin Hardman

  The show we watched was one of Electra’s choosing: a prerecorded horror anthology comprised of thirty-minute segments. However, rather than sit in her own chair, Electra chose to squeeze in next to me. Although oversized, the recliner wasn’t really designed to accommodate two, but after a little shapeshifting on my part – basically, altering some of the contours of my body – we were able to sit comfortably. (And even if we’d remained uncomfortable, I wasn’t going to complain.)

  We were perhaps five minutes into the second show segment when the doorbell rang, sounding on a device built especially for the theater room.

  “That’s Alpha Prime,” I announced, after reaching out and confirming that fact empathically.

  Electra stood up as I grabbed the remote and turned the television off. A moment later, I was on my feet as well, and then – after shifting my body back to its normal shape – teleported us to the front door. I immediately opened it to let my father in.

  “Hey,” Alpha Prime said as he walked inside.

  “Whoa!” exclaimed Electra, noting (as did I) that my father was holding five pizza boxes in each hand. “Did you get a second job delivering fast food or something?”

  “Hardly,” my father replied with a laugh. “But I’ve been watching Jim stuff his face all day, so after our last escapade in the Vault, I figured he’d be hungry enough to eat a horse.”

  Electra and I both laughed at that, but his statement wasn’t far from the truth. I had tweaked my internal systems after our run-in with Mouse so that I wouldn’t get hungry. However, given my druthers, I probably would have eaten much earlier (and in copious quantities).

  “Let me give you a hand,” I said, taking a stack of the pizza boxes from my father. “All right, let’s go eat.”

  ***

  We wound up eating in the breakfast nook – a cozy area near the kitchen that was dominated by a counter-height table that could seat eight. It was the place where I’d normally taken meals with my family, so it was second nature for me to eat there on this occasion.

  Apparently Alpha Prime was of the same mind as Electra in terms of taking a step back from our Mouse hunt, so to speak. He didn’t mention it at all during the meal, instead choosing to regale me and Electra with some humorous anecdotes from his past adventures. I had to admit that he was a good storyteller, and I enjoyed listening to him.

  After eating, the three of us played a couple of board games, at my father’s suggestion. In all honesty, it felt weird to me to be doing so when the issue of Mouse was still so prevalent, but Alpha Prime had insisted.

  “Listen,” he’d said, “I’ve been where you are – in the middle of a mission that not only has high stakes but personal relevance. If you don’t do something to keep your spirits up, you’ll get into a funk so overwhelming that it will be impossible to be fully effective.”

  Thus, I had reluctantly given in, but ultimately had a great time. I didn’t win any games, but it was lots of fun playing with my father and Electra. (And it did feel good to take my mind off my problems.)

  “Okay, it’s obviously not my night,” I declared after losing the fourth game. I then pushed my chair back from the table and stood up.

  “You’re quitting?” Electra asked in a surprised tone.

  “Just going to grab some more pizza,” I replied. At the same time, I hooked a thumb over my shoulder towards the kitchen, where we’d placed the food.

  “I’ll get it for you,” Electra stated, coming to her feet. “Just stay here and chat with AP.”

  I simply stared at her as she walked to the kitchen. Frankly speaking, I was a little surprised; typically Electra despised stereotypical roles, like a woman fetching a man’s food.

  “Well,” my father intoned, getting my attention, “I think I’m going to head out.”

  “Oh, okay,” I responded as Alpha Prime stood up. “I’m sorry it wasn’t the dinner you probably had planned, but I really enjoyed this.”

  “Me, too,” he conceded with a nod. “This was great. I mean, I still want us to have some father-son time, but I wouldn’t mind doing this again.”

  “Same here,” I remarked, “on both counts.”

  “Anyway, let’s talk about tomorrow for a sec,” my father proposed, turning serious. “There’s someone I think we should talk to, so be ready bright and early.”

  I nodded. “Sounds good. Who are we going to see?”

  “Let me hold that in reserve for tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t want you dwelling on it too much.”

  “Ha!” I chortled. “And you think I won’t dwell on it now that you’ve mentioned it?”

  “Yeah, it is kind of a catch-22,” he admitted as Electra came back with a couple of slices of pizza on a plate.

  “Hey,” she said to him as she placed the pizza in front of me, “you’re not leaving, are you?”

  “Yeah, I have to take off,” he declared. “Me and Jim have an early start tomorrow.”

  “You mean we have an early start tomorrow,” she corrected.

  Alpha Prime looked at me, and I just shrugged, saying, “You’re the one who dragged her into this.”

  My father threw up his hands in capitulation. “All right, I’ll see the two of you in the morning.”

  With that, he gave Electra a hug and a kiss on the forehead, and then I walked him to the door and saw him off.

  Returning to the breakfast nook, I saw that Electra had put away the board games.

  “You heading home, too?” I asked before taking a bite of the pizza she’d brought me.

  “Do you want me to?” she asked coquettishly.

  “What I want is to stay on your father’s good side.”

  “Why is everything with you always about my dad?” she pouted.

  “It’s not,” I countered. “Occasionally, it’s about Esper.”

  She laughed at that. “Okay then, why is it always about the adults I live with?”

  I sighed. “Look, I want us to get back to the point where we were before, but – everything else aside – it’s going to be difficult if those two don’t like me.”

  “Wouldn’t your time be better spent on making me like you?”

  “Nah, because if Vir and Esper like me, I can get you on board,” I quipped. “Speaking of Esper, have you heard from her?”

  “Nope,” Electra answered, shaking her head. “But she’s off on assignment, so we may not hear from her until she gets back.”

  I simply nodded in understanding. Whatever mission Esper got sent on, she was probably operating under radio silence until it was completed.

  “Anyway,” Electra continued, “why don’t we continue this back in the theater room?”

  As she spoke, she picked up the plate of pizza she’d given me and began walking away.

  “So, you want to continue our date night?” I quizzed, following her.

  She giggled. “It’s not a date, and what I really want is to finish the show we started before Alpha Prime showed up.”

  “So you do want to continue our date,” I teased.

  I kept needling her about our “date” as we headed back to the theater room, occasionally taking a bite of pizza as we walked. On her part, Electra laughingly denied each time that it was a date.

  Once in the theater room, Electra took control of the remote and squeezed in next to me again on the recliner, while I finished off the pizza. It was only at that point that I began paying any real attention to the show. Electra appeared to find it engrossing, but to me it was incredibly boring. In fact, I started to doze almost immediately, and within minutes I was fast asleep.

  Chapter 37

  I woke up alone in the recliner. Looking around, I noted that I was still in the theater room, although the screen was now off. I frowned, trying to recall the previous night; the last thing I remembered was sitting in the recliner with Electra, watching some awful horror show.

  Now that she had come to mind, I reached out for my ex empathically, and picked up her vibe almost immediately. I
frowned. From what I could sense, she seemed to be in a room that had been designated as my mother’s office. (My mom had been a midlist author of superhero romances.) Curious as to what she was doing in there, I was about to teleport to her when my cell phone chirped to let me know I’d received a voicemail message.

  I pulled the phone out and saw that I actually had two missed calls: one from Myshtal the night before, and one from my father just a minute or so earlier. (In fact, it was probably Alpha Prime’s call that had woken me up.) I also saw that they had both left me voicemails.

  Myshtal’s message was fairly straightforward: she was just calling to check in and would chat with me later. My father’s message was similarly direct: he was on his way and would be at my door within thirty minutes.

  Yawning, I stood up and stretched. I’d had to shapeshift again when Electra sat next to me, so I quickly morphed back to my normal frame. I then did a repeat of the previous day, teleporting to my room and racing through my morning routine and shower at super speed. I then dressed and teleported to my mother’s office.

  Although her back was to me when I popped up, Electra – without turning around – gave me a hearty, “Good morning.” She had obviously sensed my bioelectric field – an ability that let her know when others were near.

  “Hey,” I said in response. “What are you doing in here?”

  Electra, who had been standing at my mother’s desk and leaning over, stepped to the side, revealing a laptop. Her body had previously been blocking it, so I hadn’t even known it was there.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she began, “but I woke up kind of early and was looking for something to do.”

  “So you spent the night here again,” I noted.

  “Yeah, but I already talked to my dad, so try not to make a thing of it.”

  I barely avoided letting out a groan of exasperation, but managed to simply say, “Okay, fine. Now, how’d you find your way in here?”

  “After I freshened up in the guest room again, I was looking for something to do and remembered the video from Mouse’s lab.”

  As she spoke, I instinctively reached towards my back pocket. Of course, the memory stick wasn’t there – it had been in my other pants. But, upon reflection, I suddenly realized that it hadn’t been there either, because I’d checked my pockets before showering. (Truth be told, I had practically forgotten about it.)

  “I got the memory stick from your pocket,” she went on, “and then pecked around until I found a laptop. I hope that was okay.”

  “How’d you get it out without waking me?” I asked.

  “The memory stick?” Electra queried with a laugh. “You were practically in a coma. I could have had a brass band playing in here and you wouldn’t have woken up. I guess you were dead tired.”

  Rather than respond, I turned my attention to the laptop screen, noting that Electra had paused the video.

  “So, did anything leap out at you?” I asked.

  “Not really,” she admitted. “But you can take a look and see what you think, since you were going to watch it again anyway.”

  “Might as well,” I said, stepping towards the laptop. “But I need to get you home soon so you can change and do whatever, because Alpha Prime will be here shortly.”

  “In case you didn’t notice, I’ve already changed, genius.”

  I blinked, then looked her up and down. I suddenly realized that she was indeed wearing different clothes.

  “What...?” I muttered. “How…?”

  “Your mom,” she stated, giggling.

  I had trouble hiding my incredulity. “Excuse me?”

  “You remember that charity auction I went to with your mom about a month ago?”

  I nodded. My mom and Electra had actually had a great relationship – which seemingly continued even after she broke up with me. It wasn’t unusual for them to go to lunch together, go shopping, etcetera.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “if you remember, I actually came over here to change and we left together. However, I never came back and got the clothes I originally wore. Your mom told me that she’d washed them and put them in a bag for me, but I never actually got around to picking them up.”

  “So you just poked around this morning until you found them.”

  “Guess that was providence, huh?” she stated with a smile.

  “I suppose,” I muttered, then turned my attention to the laptop. I hit Play and the video resumed. I watched for about ten seconds, and then my eyes went wide and I drew in a sharp breath.

  “What is it?” Electra asked in sudden alarm.

  “This isn’t the same video,” I said woodenly.

  Chapter 38

  It turned out that the video wasn’t just a single clip; it was multiple clips combined back-to-back into a single file. More specifically, it appeared to be the footage from Mouse’s lab, but from various camera angles.

  When I had first played it on the monitor in the lab, the segment of footage I’d seen was the same thing Alpha Prime and the others had shown me. Thus, I had – wrongfully – assumed that the entire file was something I’d seen before. However, what Electra was watching when I found her in my mother’s office was footage of the same scene, but from a different perspective. Luckily, it only took a few seconds of viewing for me to realize that.

  After I understood what I was looking at, I watched the entire video file from beginning to end. Thankfully, it was relatively short – maybe two minutes altogether – but unfortunately, nothing in any of the footage stood out to me. I watched it a second time (with Electra looking over my shoulder), eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. However, it wasn’t until I watched it a third time, at the juncture when the myriad holograms were running around Mouse’s lab, that I noticed something unusual.

  “There!” I said excitedly, pausing the footage and pointing.

  Electra narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. “I’m not sure what you’re seeing.”

  “Right there,” I reiterated, tapping the screen. “That guy doesn’t have a backpack on.”

  “Okay,” Electra muttered without a lot of conviction. “One out of a billion holograms isn’t wearing a backpack. So what?”

  “It’s not just a backpack,” I explained. “It’s his bug-out bag.”

  “Again, so what?”

  I debated trying to explain the significance of it in greater detail, but didn’t want to waste time.

  “Just hang out here for a second,” I said. “I need to go check something out.”

  “Not without me,” Electra stated fiercely.

  From the look on her face, it was clear that she was serious. Rather than argue, I simply teleported us.

  Chapter 39

  Our destination was Mouse’s lab. As before, it was dark when we appeared. I switched my vision over to the infrared and made a beeline for one of the nearby worktables. There was a cabinet underneath it, which I opened. A moment later, the lights in the lab started coming on, and I switched my vision back to normal as I pulled out the contents of the cabinet: Mouse’s bug-out bag.

  Electra began walking towards me as I set the bag on top of the worktable.

  “It’s still here,” I muttered, more to myself than Electra. I hadn’t even thought to check for it previously; after viewing all the holograms in the video wearing it, I had just assumed it was gone.

  “What’s the big deal about this thing?” she asked.

  “Don’t you get it?” I asked. “It’s his bug-out bag. This is the bag Mouse takes when he has to go on the run.”

  To emphasize my point, I opened up the bag and pulled out a couple of its contents: a computer tablet, a sat phone, and a small wad of cash.

  “I guess he didn’t have time to take it,” Electra surmised. “He did leave in a bit of a rush.”

  I shook my head as I began putting everything back in the backpack. “That just doesn’t sound like Mouse. The whole point of the bag is to provide him with resources he’ll need. He wou
ldn’t just leave it.”

  “Maybe the Mouse you knew wouldn’t,” she countered. “But this seems to be the all-new, screw-loose version.”

  “Nice,” I said acerbically, trying not to get angry.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “but you know what I mean. The person we’re dealing with doesn’t seem to be the same Mouse who led the League – not if he’s attacking us and breaking into the Vault.”

  “And I still say he wouldn’t do that without a reason.”

  “You’re also saying he wouldn’t leave without his bug-out bag, and yet…”

  She trailed off, gesturing towards the backpack.

  “There is another possible explanation,” I stated.

  Electra gave me an inquisitive look. “Like what?”

  “Maybe he didn’t go anywhere,” I said.

  Chapter 40

  Comically, we spent a few minutes shouting for Mouse to come out. Of course, he never responded or appeared.

  “Do you honestly think he’s hiding somewhere nearby?” Electra finally asked.

  “Anything’s possible,” I confessed with a shrug. “That said, ‘nearby’ doesn’t necessarily mean within shouting distance.”

  “But he didn’t go far enough to need his bug-out bag.”

  “Not according to the video,” I replied. As I spoke, a thought occurred to me. Brow crinkled, I walked over to the monitor that had turned on the day before. It was dark – still shut down.

  Electra, who had followed me, asked, “What are you thinking?”

  “I made an assumption about the video file that was flat-out wrong yesterday. It just occurred to me that maybe I overlooked something else, but the machine isn’t turning on this time.”

  “So what turned it on yesterday? Did one of us inadvertently flip a power switch?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? Almost everything in here was designed and built by Mouse from scratch. It may not necessarily conform or operate in a way we expect.”