Specter: Circuit Series Book One

by Dailey, Lacey

  “Stop punishing yourself for something you did not do.”

  I sat up quickly, looking frantically around the cemetery. Her voice was loud. It was right there. So close I could almost feel her breath on my neck.

  “Let yourself have a life, Sage. I’m happy with the one I had. Get to a place where you're happy with the one you have too.”

  I wasn’t sure how to do that, or if it was even possible. I turned around to ask her how she’d been happy with the way she died and leaving so soon, but she was gone. And it was just me, sitting in a spot that was supposed to belong to me but didn’t anymore. My mind raced to keep up with all the thoughts and doubts that were swarming it.

  Was I using Trish’s death as an excuse to stop myself from making another friend?

  Yes, I was.

  But I had no idea how to stop.

  17

  Wren

  Staring into a man’s crotch was not what was on my agenda for the day. But here I was, peering into Craig’s trouser covered crotch as he hovered over me, blocking any light and ensuring I couldn’t see a damn thing. A distinct feeling I recognized as discomfort swept over me.

  “Find anything?” He shouted much louder than what was necessary. Sure, he was tall and I was lying on my back underneath his wide L-shaped desk, but we were still alone and it’s not like there was any background noise.

  “Actually, Craig.” I started, clearing my throat. “It’d be helpful if you backed up. You’re blocking the light.”

  “Oh!” He chuckled at himself, giving me the light back and removing his crotch from my line of sight.

  I peered upward at the power strip that was stuck to the bottom of Craig’s desk. When I spotted the problem, I repressed the urge to howl and yank out all my hair. I closed my eyes and took a calming breath before reaching upward and flipping the switch.

  “Hey!” I couldn’t see Craig, but I was fairly certain he was bouncing around in glee. “You got it! Good work! You’re a genius.”

  I was not a genius. I was a human who knew how to work a power strip.

  I wiggled my way out from the under the desk and stood up, smoothing out my shirt. Today, my polo was bright orange and looked absolutely ridiculous with my hair color, but there was nothing in me that cared. I liked bright colors. Even more so after Sage compared me to a sunflower and left a bundle of them outside my door. Any other day, I wouldn’t have been keen on getting listed under the same category as a sunflower. But ever since Sage said it weeks ago, I felt as if I was being compared to the King of England. I felt powerful. Noticed. Important.

  Like the tallest God damn sunflower that ever grew.

  “Did you find the problem?” Craig rubbed at the back of his neck. He appeared nervous, as if he thought he blew something up or pulled the pin on a grenade.

  Not today, Craig.

  “Yeah. The power strip got turned off.”

  “Oh, did you fix it?”

  “Uhm, yeah. I just turned it back on.”

  “Cool.” He bobbed his head a couple of times. “How’d you do it?”

  I peered over my shoulder, checking to see if somebody else had entered the room while I was stuffed under the table. There’s no way that question was directed at me.

  Except it was

  “I, uh, flipped the switch, Craig.”

  “Oh.” He hit himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand. “Duh. That makes sense. Sorry. I’m not great with all this techy stuff.”

  I wouldn’t consider flipping a switch “techy stuff” but I kept my trap closed. To me, Craig came across like a slice of old, wheat bread. Bland. Dry. And constantly overcompensating for the fact that he was everybody’s second choice. My big, nerd brain couldn’t figure how he had become a third owner of a million-dollar company.

  But there was obviously something cooking inside his brain. And somewhere, to someone, he was a big, fluffy slice of French bread right out of the oven.

  I just wasn’t that someone.

  “It’s not a problem, Craig. Easy fix.”

  “Great. Thanks a lot, Wren. I’m sure I sound like a moron not knowing how to work the gizmo that’s under my desk.”

  “Nah. It’s fine. It’s my job to do this anyway.” I let out a dry laugh. “Better than paying me to watch ice melt, ya know?”

  It was supposed to be a joke. It was such an awful one. I laughed alone for a second until I realized he had no fucking clue what I was referring to. I snapped my mouth shut and gazed at his cocked head and polite smile.

  “You’re an interesting guy, Wren.” He held out his hand, waiting for me to shake it. “You’re a great person to have on our team. Lilah’s lucky to have such a great brother.”

  And there it was. The reason why Craig had so many clients. The man may have been wheat bread, but he was the wheat bread everybody pulled off the shelf first. When people needed help finding a job, they came to him. Not because he had connections. Or a successful company. Or two kick-ass business partners.

  It was because he was a people person. His ability to empathize and understand a person’s situation no matter how tough or bizarre was uncanny. It was admirable. Twenty minutes in a meeting with him and clients left feeling like they’d made a new best friend to bring home to their mother.

  People trusted him because he anticipated how they thought or felt about a situation before they even processed it themselves.

  Maybe that’s why he couldn’t handle the knowledge on how to turn on a power strip. His hairless head was stuffed full of other’s emotions and thoughts. Not to mention the whole own a business thing. Craig was an odd duck, but I was certain it was all part of his charm.

  “Thanks, Craig. I keep trying to tell Lilah that, but she won’t listen. Maybe you could slip her a post-it or something.”

  This time, he laughed. “You don’t give your sister enough credit. She’s sweet like a kitten.”

  If there was a gulp of Diet Coke in my mouth, I would’ve spat it all over him in complete astonishment. “A kitten?! Man, your interns about piss their pants when she comes within five feet of them.”

  “Oh, it’s all for show. Like a good cop bad cop thing. She’s the bad cop who comes in with a steel fist and heart of ice, making sure everybody’s doing what they’re supposed to in the quickest and most efficient way possible. And then Kate and I go around, ensuring everybody feels like a million bucks after they just accomplished what felt like the hardest six hours of their life. There’s nothing like making somebody feel good after busting their chops.”

  That sentence had my brain spinning wildly and wondering what Ace would have thought of it if he were here. Lilah and Craig’s plan seemed well thought out, really. The best way to make somebody feel appreciated was to reward them for a job they were already getting paid to do. I’d always thought the random cupcakes, company lunches, and doughnut days were overkill. Why give someone a treat when you’ve already given them a paycheck?

  But with how successful SevTeck has become in less than two years, I’d say there’s a method to their madness.

  “Well, have a good one, Craig.” I lifted my hand in a small wave and shuffled to the door. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

  “Thanks a lot, Wren. And call me Hal.”

  “Why?” It was the first time in two years I’d actually asked the question. After all this time wondering and making up my own scenarios, I could have just used my words like an adult and asked. That wasn’t normally me. I kept to myself, especially when I was in this building, but hanging out with Sage had me feeling more powerful and confident than ever.

  So, I asked without the worry I’ll offend him or get decked in the face. “Is Hal your middle name?”

  “No.” He chuckled. “Hal is my father’s name.” He sat down in his desk chair and crossed his legs. “My father was twenty-one when he opened up his own business. It wasn’t much. Just a small printing company whose only job was printing the local newspaper, but the small little sh
op on the fourth floor of a run-down building was his pride and joy. I used to go to work with him when I was a kid and swore up and down I’d take over the company one day. I told him I’d have a big, brown leather chair. Just like he did.”

  It was hard not to smile at the pride projecting off Craig’s face or the way he rubbed the arms of the big, brown leather chair he was perched in. “What happened? Why didn’t you take it over?”

  “The business went under when I was seventeen. The town I grew up in was small and a lot of the neighborhood just stopped buying newspapers. When the paper shut down, so did we. My dad got sick a few years afterward, died a few years after that, and attempting to reopen just never felt like the right move.”

  “I’m sorry, Craig.” I was the worst type of human. Literal trash. Here I was, making fun of Craig’s weird tendency to ask people to call him by a random name when the name wasn’t random at all. It belonged to his father. His dead father.

  Trash. That’s what I was.

  “It’s okay, Wren.” He fiddled with the watch on his wrist. “My father was a big inspiration to me. He’s the sole reason I agreed to join in when Lilah approached me with the idea for this company. Truth is, I had no interest in recruiting. I just wanted to make my dad proud. I thought I was gonna fuck it up, so I started asking people to call me Hal as a reminder of why I was doing this. And to take it seriously.”

  Wow.

  “Well, if it’s any consolation, I think you’re doing a fantastic job. Your employees love you. I don’t see how your father couldn’t be proud of all this.”

  “Thank you, Wren. I appreciate your kindness.” He flashed me a smile that was nothing but genuine, and I wondered if that came from his father as well. “And thank you for fixing my mess up.”

  “It was nothing, Hal. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.”

  I was barely out of his office when he turned back to his desk and started flipping through packets of paper. I shuffled back to my own office, mulling over Craig’s past and what I’d just learned. I was exactly like him.

  Wasn’t I?

  I spent the better part of a year judging him for living a life with two names when I’d been doing exactly the same thing. Nobody outside the internet world referred to me as Specter, but I’d still created an alias based on a dream I’d had for myself. I chose a name based on a hero I longed to be. Craig found his own hero, and after that story, I’d say his hero was way cooler than mine.

  SAGE

  I wasn’t sure what was so fascinating about the inside of a paper cup, but Wren’s gaze was focused so intently on what was floating inside the dark liquid, my curiosity heightened as I took a tentative step inside his office.

  I knocked lightly on the doorframe, announcing my presence. His head rolled upward, eyes null and face blank behind his glasses. He looked more bored and vacant than I’d ever seen before.

  And then he scanned me standing in the doorway and seemed to jolt alive. A surge of energy overtook him as if somebody had just flipped the power switch.

  “Sage, hi!” His eyes started to sparkle as he flew from a massive computer chair that was nothing like the yellow one I knew was perched in front of his desk at Circuit. His lips curled into a smile, making his freckles dance as he approached me.

  “Hi, Wren.”

  “How are you?”

  He looked stunned that I was standing here but was too polite to say so. After more than a month of dodging any invitation to go anywhere or do anything outside video games and his apartment, here I was. I’d be shocked too.

  “I’m doing good.”

  “Great. I’m happy to hear that.”

  He rocked on his feet, grinning up at me.

  Why are you here?

  The question was on the tip of his tongue but I knew he’d never ask because he just didn’t care. The details didn’t matter to Wren. If I offered them up, he'd take them and tuck them some place special, knowing how hard it was for me to spare them. But he never asked. Because Wren knew getting me to talk was like pulling teeth sometimes. It was easier when he was around, but I still did not enjoy it.

  “So this is your office, huh?” I took a step inside, peering around the small space. It was basically made up of just a large, basic wooden desk with a monitor on top and a paper cup next to a keyboard. There was a vast window on the wall behind his desk, but other than that, it was pretty sparse. There were no colors or paintings or pictures like there were in Julie’s office. There was nothing that said it was Wren’s. It could have been anybody’s. Actually, it could’ve been vacant. Aside from the cup and the messenger bag beneath his desk, there were no signs of life.

  “Yep. This is where I spend my days before heading off to fight crime with my cyan crayon and yellow chair.”

  “Well, even Clark Kent had a day job.”

  He went silent for a long moment, gazing at me like I was sweating glitter. It was after I’d cleared my throat that he came out of whatever state he was in. “True, but his is cooler.”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged and walked across his office, peering down at the city below us. There were people everywhere, likely oblivious to all the darkness our world held, while the man behind me worked to remove it. “I think you’re a million times cooler than him. I mean, Superman isn’t real. But you are, ya know? You actually use your day job to help cover up what you do at night. You may not possess super strength or spend your nights flying around in a unitard, but you’re fighting crime all the same.”

  “Sometimes it’s easy to forget why we do what we do.” He admitted, his gaze mirroring mine. "But ever since you came along, I’ve never forgotten.”

  “So, I’m like your living, breathing success story, huh?” I teased. “Do you have posters of me all over Circuit?”

  “Something like that.” His smile crept up his lips. “Cruz reminds us all the time that what we do is admirable and good and brave and all that. But it wasn’t until you and your gifts that we were punched in the face with the undeniable truth that we are literally saving people’s lives.”

  His smile deflated as he kept his gaze focused on the cars speeding below us. I was sure he wasn’t actually seeing them, and just stuck in his own head. “Wren? Are you okay?”

  He bobbed his head and spun around, leaning against the window. He crossed his arms over his chest and propped one foot against the wall. “I’m just having a strange day.”

  “Oh. Do you want to talk about it?” It was an odd change, being the listener instead of the talker, but I liked the reversal. I was afraid Wren felt like a trashcan. I kept dumping all my problems on top of him like piles and piles of garbage, and I often wondered who he dumped his problems on. I was more than willing to be his human trashcan. I wanted to be someone he unloaded on. I wanted to be something for him other than the phantom girl he’d saved.

  “Do you know that guy Craig?”

  “The one who also calls himself Hal?”

  “That’s him.” He looked down at the floor. “I learned today he calls himself Hal because it’s his dead father’s name, and he’s been working his ass off to be half the businessman his father was. I mean, how fucking incredible is that? There I was, walking around like a giant orange dick, judging him like some nutso when all he’d been doing was trying to remind himself why he was doing what he was.”

  I couldn’t see his face, but I knew by the way his voice cracked he was struggling majorly with the way he’d judged Hal Craig. “Wren, everybody judges people. Even people who claim they don’t judge people, judge people. It’s human nature. The fact you’re able to admit you judged Hal Craig wrongfully says enough about you.”

  “Does it though? I mean, I’m exactly like him. Except, Craig doesn’t hide the second part of him. He doesn’t hide who he is or who he wants to be. I hide who I am all the time to protect myself.”

  “Craig asking people to call him Hal and you being Specter is not the same.”

  “Isn’t it?”

 
“No. Not at all. To me, it sounds like Craig is doing it to better himself. Which is why he had no problem admitting it and embracing it. You’re hiding Specter because you don’t necessarily do it to better yourself. You do it to help others. And if you got caught, you wouldn’t be able to do that anymore.”

  He nodded his head, seeming to absorb my words. I wasn’t sure if I was saying anything that was actually helpful or just putting words together to form a sentence. But when he lifted his head to look at me, his smile told me at least a few of those words had been right.

  “Ya know, I used to think that saving you was the greatest thing that could ever happen.” He cleared his throat and wrung his hands together but did not drop his steady gaze. “But then I got to know you, and I’ve decided that whatever friendship that formed between us is the greatest thing that has ever happened. I guess I just… I guess I wish Wren was as cool as Specter, ya know? That it’s the cool hacker man everybody sees and spends time with. Craig flashes both parts of him proudly, and the part I flash is the one that wears briefs with cartoons on them, eats Lucky Charms for dinner, and watches ice melt.”

  I broke.

  I broke watching him deflate like an old balloon. He went slack against the wall, his shoulders hunched forward and head angled downward. It was a miracle his glasses didn’t slide down his nose. I longed to give him some sort of comfort. Form the right words to tell him that Specter was only a piece of Wren. That the man who spends hours changing the world for the better could have never existed without the dorky one who wears polos every day and works for his sister.

  They were one and in the same. They worked together to make all he is. A beautiful man with a soul that shines bright, overpowering a cloud of darkness. My mind spun, letters flying in circles around my head as the right words formed.

  “I told Julie you’re my best friend.” I blurted, keeping my eyes locked on him so I didn’t get lost in all the truths that are eager to flow out of me. “I told her you’re my best friend, and she started asking these hard, annoying questions about why I’d refused to hang out with you unless it was during a specific time frame. I’d blurted out I was afraid you were gonna die. Because, ya know, the last best friend I had died right in front of me. And how fucking ridiculous would it be if I got the man who saved my life killed?” The look on his face reminded me of worn out concrete. There were cracks forming everywhere, but it still longed to be sturdy. “That was almost two weeks ago, and I’ve been mulling over it in my head, trying to tell myself it wasn’t my fault somebody shot Trish, and that if I ever wanted to walk down the street with you, it was super unlikely you’d get shot. But I just... I couldn’t do it, Wren. I do not want to be the reason you get hurt. But then today, I was with Julie and she’d mentioned if I didn’t go into that bank with Trish that day, and everything would’ve worked out like it was supposed to, I would’ve regretted it. I would’ve regretted not being there.” It was a miracle I was still on my feet by the way my body started shaking. “And I think, with the bad shit I’ve had to see in life, I forget how much good there is too. Actually, I think there’s more good than there is bad because there are people like you putting a stop to it. The darkness blinded me. It still does. And when the light cracks through, I just turn around and pretend I don't see it. It's easier that way." I forced a rough breath out of my chest. "I probably sound like I’m rambling, going off on a tangent, but I guess what I’m trying to say is… when my mind gets all heavy, you’re my favorite place to go when I need to feel light again.”