Born Again

by Adam Dark

  Well, he’d just have to check it out anyway; he wanted to see what Chase might find for them, and he had absolutely no desire to ask the guy if he’d sent the right address.

  Ben had to rifle through his backpack for a while before he found a clean sheet of paper in an old notebook and ripped it out. Not wanting to risk waking her up with a text, he took the paper and a pen to the counter and wrote April an actual note: ‘Woke up early. Went out for a bit. There’s coffee. Help yourself to anything.’ Then, because it seemed weird not to, he put his name there at the bottom and left it at that. It had been a long time since he’d felt this restless and actually intended to do something about it.

  Driving through West Roxbury made for a particularly surreal experience, mostly for the fact that Ben ogled these ridiculously affluent houses and couldn’t imagine Chase doing anything in one of these. Maybe the guy was visiting somebody—rich grandparents or a childhood friend who’d done surprisingly well for himself.

  When he pulled up to the address Chase had given, his beat-up Honda Civic found itself parked outside a relatively smaller house compared to the mansions surrounding it. But the house had a huge corner lot completely blanketed in a few inches of snow. The driveway and sidewalk had been neatly shoveled already after last night’s apparent snowfall, and Ben tried to imagine Chase out there himself with a shovel and gloves, toiling away at some time earlier than 10:00 a.m. He couldn’t.

  He felt pretty stupid walking up the driveway and along the shoveled path to the front porch. Chase could have just as easily sent him some random person’s address as a joke; the guy obviously didn’t have explicable reasons for messing with people. Like introducing himself with the threat of a loaded gun, for instance. But Ben knocked on the door anyway and hoped he wouldn’t be apologizing to a stranger in a few seconds.

  “Yeah, it’s open.” The voice blasted at him from beside the door, and Ben jumped.

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s just a speaker, Ben. Come on in.”

  Okay, it was definitely Chase’s voice. Then Ben found the little black box mounted to the wall beside the front door. He didn’t think this could get any weirder, but he opened the door and stepped inside anyway.

  It did get weirder, actually. If this was Chase’s house, it was a really nice house on the inside, too. Even if the guy didn’t live here, it was really nice. Ben had only been marginally aware of how large and well-furnished April’s apartment was, though his main concern then had been making sure she was all right. This, though, made her place look like no big deal.

  He walked into an actual foyer, staring at the two oil paintings on either wall beside him. A decent-sized staircase sat directly in front of him, with a wrought-iron banister and everything. When he realized how polished the wooden floors were, he bent awkwardly to untie the laces of his boots.

  “Naw, don’t worry about it,” Chase called to his left. “Just come in.”

  Okay, and even that odd bit of courteous greeting sounded like a fake Chase, but he followed the voice anyway and stepped into the weirdest room he’d ever seen. The half on his left toward the front of the house and the heavily curtained bay window looked like it belonged here—leather couches, polished wooden side tables, a few more paintings hung over, yep, a stone fireplace. But to Ben’s right, it looked like he was about to step into a high-security, high-tech computer lab.

  Three long tables were lined up next to each other and stretched almost across the entire living room, or study, or whatever the heck fancy name he was supposed to call it. Each table had two computer monitors set up on really high frames, angled downward; one of them had three. And he couldn’t even count all the different keyboards on the tables, some of them the size of his phone with just a few keys. There was a disconcerting lack of wiring for so many components until he found the thick, wrapped cables tied together on the far side of the tables and trailing back to the far wall on Ben’s right. And that wall was basically one massive shelving unit, filled with what looked like computer towers and modems and a bunch of stuff Ben didn’t pretend to recognize. Blue, green, and white lights flashed from those shelves in chaotic patterns, but the whole thing made surprisingly little noise—just a quiet humming in the background.

  ‘No way.’ Not like it made any difference, but Ian actually whispered it.

  Behind the ridiculously long three-table desk, Chase rolled back in a leather executive chair the color of the wood floors, lined with brass studs and everything. The guy grinned at Ben and slapped his hands down on the armrests. “Glad you came by.”

  “Uh, yeah.” Ben glanced up at the super detailed crown molding lining the room and forced himself to shut his mouth. “So… who’s house is this?” He’d tried as hard as he could to make that a casual question, but it sounded like he’d never stepped into a house like this before. Which he hadn’t.

  “Mine. Welcome.”

  Then Ben remembered his first less-than-pleasant experience meeting this guy and the fact that he’d stepped inside an apartment across the hall from the brothers they’d … saved. “I thought you had—”

  “Oh, that apartment?” Chase said. No, Ben really didn’t want his mind being read by two guys now, thanks. “Naw, it was just open.”

  So Chase let himself into strangers apartments but lived in this setup. This was so weird.

  “Uh, okay. You know, I never asked you what you do,” Ben said. With all the crap Chase had pulled on them since that night at the brothers’ apartment—who apparently weren’t Chase’s neighbors—he couldn’t imagine the guy holding any kind of job that paid him this well.

  Chase snorted. “Whatever I want.” He swiveled his chair to face Ben head-on and threw his arms open. “Trust-fund baby.” Like it was a grand announcement Ben was supposed to find particularly enlightening.

  Actually, it was. Once Ben had a few seconds to put all the pieces together, so many things about the guy sitting in that ludicrously expensive-looking chair made sense. “Oh.” That was all he could say.

  “I mean, I still work,” Chase added. “Just for myself.” He chuckled a little, swiveled his chair away, and bent over the armrest to grab something off the ground. When he turned back to face Ben again, he held a two-foot bong in one hand and a lighter in the other. “I was just about to take a break. Want some?”

  “Seriously?”

  Chase eyed him for a few seconds. “Yeah. It’s legal here.”

  “I’m good, man.”

  With a shrug, Chase turned his attention to the glass piece and fiddled with something—beyond being able to recognize what a bong even was, Ben didn’t know anything else about the parts or the process. And he kind of wanted to keep it that way. “So what did you want me to find for you?” he asked, frowning at whatever was in his hand before searching the desk in front of him and the floor around him.

  “Uh, I wanted to talk about the next project—”

  “Oh, you mean demon,” Chase said with a smirk, but he didn’t stop his search to look up at Ben.

  Ben blinked himself back into focus, still trying to get used to having spotted ‘the Chase’ in his natural habitat. “Sure. I thought maybe you’d be able to find something about it that might help us. Just to be a little more prepared when we go… in.”

  “Yeah, when’s that gonna be, by the way?” Chase grunted, then put his paraphernalia back on the ground by his chair.

  “Not sure yet. If we can find something useful, I guess sooner rather than later.”

  “Cool. Hey, so I hafta go grab more ganj. I’ll be right back.” He stood and pointed at the desk in general. “You ever seen a setup like this?”

  Ben slowly shook his head. “Not even close.”

  “Sweet. Check it out, and then… uh, I’ll show you how it works when I get back. Built it all myself. We can look for whatever you want.” Ben stepped aside when the guy headed toward him, but his host stopped beside him and clapped a hand down on Ben’s shoulder. “Just don’t touch anything
.”

  “No problem,” Ben said with wide eyes. Chase grinned at him again, then passed him into the freakin’ foyer and headed up the stairs.

  ‘Dude,’ Ian said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Ben muttered. He stared at everything a second longer, then his curiosity got the better of him. Walking around this side of the super long table, he found himself still completely clueless as to what any of this was. All the monitors were on with different screens pulled up, most of them dark with all the words in either white or neon green.

  ‘What the heck does he use all this for?’ Ian asked.

  “Beats me.” Ben could work his way around electronics, no problem, but this was beyond normal-person technology use. The monitor just to the right of Chase’s chair had something Ben guessed was code, for as little as he knew about coding at all. But it had all the letters, symbols, and numbers in weird arrangements, so either way, he couldn’t understand a thing.

  ‘Hey, what if he’s like a hacker or something?’

  “No…” Ben said. Then he cocked his head. “Actually, that’s not impossible.” If he’d ever taken the time to imagine a hacker, it might have looked something like this in his head. Definitely less detailed. He walked around the chair, carefully stepping around that ridiculous bong on the floor, and checked the monitors on the other half of the row of tables. Just a bunch more stuff he didn’t understand.

  The last monitor, though, looked really familiar until Ben realized it was an angled shot of Chase’s front porch and the front door. The guy had a camera at his front door. “Oh, that’s cute,” he muttered, not at all loving the fact that Chase had seen him jump at his voice over the speaker outside.

  ‘The guy’s kinda for real, huh?’

  “Yeah, I guess.” Ben turned away from the desk and went to the massive shelf against the wall. Literally the only thing he recognized there were HDMI ports.

  ‘You gonna tell April and Peter you were here?’

  Ben didn’t really want to think about that part. “Why?” He peered closer to the shelf and one of the units on it. Yep, that was actually a Grateful Dead decal stuck on the side of the black plastic box. He shook his head.

  ‘Just ‘cause I don’t think they’d believe you.’

  “Probably not.” He still hadn’t decided if he was going to tell them anything about coming here. First, he had to see if Chase could actually help him find something useful before they went after that level two. Ben had a feeling they might need more than Peter’s box in the future. And Peter would definitely freak out about Ben having asked Chase for help.

  ‘Are you trying to protect his feelings now too?’ Ian asked.

  “Hey, remember when you were quiet last night? I liked that.”

  “Who the hell are you talking to?”

  Crap.

  22

  Ben turned from the shelf to see Chase standing just inside the room and staring at him with wide eyes. “Myself.”

  “Bull,” Chase said. “Nobody talks to themselves like that.” He set a plastic baggie of what Ben guessed was his weed on the side table against the wall and eyed Ben up and down. “You schizophrenic or something?”

  ‘Just when he was starting to seem okay,’ Ian said.

  Ben’s jaw already ached from how tightly he clenched it now. “No,” he said.

  Apparently, his anger must have been clear enough in that one word. Chase raised his eyebrows, but his glare hadn’t softened. “Fine. So my second guess was that this is some kind of possession thing going on.”

  “What?” Was this guy serious?

  “You been rolling around with a demon taking a joyride in there?” Chase stepped sideways into the room so he stood on the other side of the long desk, and Ben started to think the guy actually believed what he was saying.

  “Dude, there’s no demon—”

  “Then go ahead and tell me what that whole creepy thing is that you do with your hands,” Chase shouted, and he jabbed a finger at Ben. “I knew it wasn’t just something you did. You’re not banishing anything, are you? What, are you making like a demon army or something?”

  Holy crap, the guy was serious, and he was freaking out. “Chase, listen to yourself right now.”

  “You know what? I have Peter and April on speed dial.”

  “You what?”

  “Yeah, how ‘bout I call them over here and tell ‘em to bring that box. Use it on you and whatever’s inside you.” Chase whipped his phone out of his back pocket.

  “Woah, woah. No,” Ben shouted. “Don’t call them. I’ll tell you what’s going on.” Ben couldn’t take the chance that the guy would actually go through with it. If Chase had taken a minute to listen to how ridiculous he sounded, he’d realize Peter and April would think he was nuts. Or maybe they’d be just suspicious enough to know that something was wrong. Because Ben hadn’t done a very good job of hiding the fact that he was a little different after their night against the Guardian.

  Chase scowled at him, but he lowered his phone, gripping it tightly at his side. “So talk.”

  Ben took a deep breath. “Okay…” Great. He’d never thought in a million years that Chase of all people would be the first person to know about Ian. And it wasn’t like he’d prepared a speech.

  ‘Hey, while you’re spilling our secret,’ Ian said, ‘just stay in front of these monitors. I’m gonna try something.’

  That was not even remotely worth telling him right now. “So you know all about what Peter and I went through eleven years ago,” he told Chase. The words tasted awful. “Or at least what the news said about it.” The guy just stared at him. “Turns out one of our friends everyone thought was dead … wasn’t. Not exactly. His spirit, I guess…” Aw, jeeze, this sounded so nuts.

  ‘You’re doing great.’

  Not. “He was stuck in, like, the spirit realm, and the huge demon in that house had trapped him there. Kicked him out of his body. So we went back a few months ago, because Ian told me in some dreams that he needed us to get him out.”

  Chase snorted.

  “I know, man. The part about me getting messages and going to this spirit realm place is totally real. I could do it before we found Ian. Uh… we had no clue what we were doing with that huge demon, but Ian did. And the only way for us to not die or get… ripped apart for eternity was…” Oh, man, he didn’t know if he could say it.

  ‘Just let it out already, dude.’

  “Was for me to let Ian share my body so we could get him out of the house and he can sometimes control me so that’s how I do all that weird glowy stuff.” It came out in one giant string of word vomit, and he had to take a huge breath, because holy crap he’d just said it out loud.

  Chase blinked at him. “You’re crazy.”

  ‘Huh.’

  Ben’s arms trembled over his clenched fists. “Chase,” he started slowly, almost growling, “you call me crazy again, and I swear, I’ll flip this whole table over.”

  ‘Wait, wait. Don’t do that.’

  Maybe Ben was bluffing, but the table didn’t look that heavy. Rage gave people super strength, right?

  “Prove it,” Chase said.

  And what was Ben supposed to say now? He had no proof other than the fact that his hands glowed and he could banish demons, both of which Chase had already seen him do. “I…”

  ‘Hey,’ Ian said, ‘tell him to come over here and look at this.’

  What?

  ‘I’m serious.’ Ben’s bodiless friend sounded remarkably confident. ‘I got his proof right here.’

  Ben swallowed. “Okay. I’ll prove it.” He nodded at the monitor in front of him.

  Frowning, Chase stormed around the long row of tables, his eyes flicking rapidly from one monitor to the next. “I told you not to touch anything.”

  “I didn’t,” Ben said. “Just—”

  The monitor in front of them went completely black, then it beeped.

  —What’s up, Chase?—

  The words appeared in
the middle of the screen instantly, not like someone was typing them from the other end of whatever kind of connection might do this. Chase whipped his head toward Ben and looked even more terrified now. “What did you do?”

  Ben shook his head. “I didn’t do anything.”

  The monitor beeped again.

  —This is Ian.—

  Chase gawked at it, then moved to another monitor and typed furiously at something Ben couldn’t begin to understand. “I have so many rewriting firewalls around this thing,” Chase said, his wide eyes glued to the screen. “How the hell did you get in?”

  “Dude, it’s not me,” Ben said. And he didn’t know if it actually was Ian, either.

  ‘Oh, it’s me,’ Ian said. ‘Pretty cool, right?’

  “Oh, my god,” Ben muttered. If this went wrong and Chase really lost it, they might be in serious trouble.

  ‘Chill out.’

  The monitor in front of Ben beeped with another message. Chase froze and leaned over to read it.

  —I didn’t break into your system. But I found everything.—

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Chase asked, then glanced at Ben.

  “Dude, I don’t know anything about anything.”

  Another beep.

  —Go ahead. Ask me about something that would only be right here in all your stuff.—

  “This is…” Chase blew out a quick breath. “What?” He poised his fingers over the keyboard but froze when the monitor beeped again.

  —Don’t type it. Just ask me out loud.—

  Chase looked at Ben, who could only shrug.

  What are you doing?

  ‘Don’t worry. I got him,’ Ian said. ‘Watch this.’

  “Fine,” Chase said. “Two years ago. August 17th.”

  —Oh, you mean like any of this stuff?—

  A box popped up on the screen, followed by two more, and then the entire monitor filled with open file after open file faster than Ben could follow. But he caught some bank statements—from a lot of different banks—and a few news headlines with words like ‘cyber attacks’ and ‘security breach’. He looked at Chase, whose mouth had dropped wide open as he gripped the back of his head. The guy looked like he wanted to shrink into himself.