The Mentor

by Pat Connid

  “Dexter, if he's really worked out this sequence, and it can be implemented real-world… this is beyond Nobel Prize. You’d change the world with something like that.”

  If The Mentor's employer was after this, after Jepson/Eller's formula, there would be no way in hell this was some philanthropic venture. Not these guys.

  “What if you... didn’t give it to the world?” I asked. “Kept it to yourself, a secret.”

  “Well, people would begin to ask questions when you started outliving your great-great-great grandkids?” He saw that I wasn’t smiling and his face lost all humor. “You're asking… if someone kept this for themselves?”

  I hesitated, but Pavan jumped in: “Okay, so maybe like a small group of someones. Crazy-rich, powerful people.”

  Patel nodded, looked between us. This time, the smile-- even the fake television one-- was long gone from his face.

  “What's this about, guys?"

  I softened the question: "As a thought experiment. We're not talking illuminati shit, err, stuff here. Just what if a small group had something like you're describing?"

  Someone across the room called for Patel. He nodded at them, and he slowly headed their way.

  My friend and I were all silent, waiting for him to articulate the words… but both already knew the answer.

  As he walked away, this is what he said:

  “Well, I’m not a fan of hyperbole, but... powerful people with big bank accounts and near immortality? They’d rule the world.”

  I'D PROMISED KAREN THE next time we had a chance to laugh over the old times there would be plenty of warning before my visit. I’d make an “appointment” to see my busy friend. Fine by me. She was worth it.

  When we’d gotten to the bottom of the stairs, Pavan made a beeline for the bathrooms, pushing past the bums and news vets who’d spent the afternoon sneaking sips of vodka out of Deer Park water bottles.

  Despite the TV doctor's ominous prognosis, I felt good. And it was the first time in a long time it seemed like the truth to say that.

  We'd found what they were after and a small part of how yours truly played a part. I was getting my hands back on the steering wheel in my own life.

  Well, maybe a couple fingers. But it was a strong start.

  On the wall opposite the security desk, there was a pictorial history of the network, and I traced its thirty year history as I waited for my friend.

  Looking down the wall, at first, when I saw her, it didn’t register I was looking at her. She was just another pretty girl, very pretty, that I’d steal some glances at, as I waited.

  What triggered me, I’m sure, was that she was staring intently at me. Strange. At some point, it seemed my Sorority She-Ra had tried to be a ghost, her surveillance of me, a secret. Hidden in shadows, beneath dashboards or in the company of fictional friends out for a night.

  My heart pressed against my throat, as she held my eyes. Mesmerizing. Then, the moment I realized that was the point...

  “Hello, Dexter!”

  It was no use running, and, in truth, as I turned, I suppose the wasp sting on my arm was no surprise at all. It was only a matter of time.

  I said to my tormentor, “I bet you don’t get invited to many parties.”

  A deep voice said, “We gonna say hurtful things, now?”

  My head swam and the most pressing thought I held as I slipped into the black, The Mentor and his supermodel sidekick each taking an arm, I hoped to god Pavan was taking his time unloading his gyro and would be a while in the john.

  Because, I couldn't allow anyone else I cared about getting hurt because of me.

  This was my fight. Live or die, this was my fight.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Waking up, the familiar drug haze pressing on my mind, I had to pry my eyes open.

  Would there be sharks? Zulu warriors with poisonous spears? Giant, spinning blades falling from the sky?

  My hands were bound and eyes were covered. Strange as it may sound, that was actually comforting. Can't hope to fight off a piranha bath in this condition, surely.

  A dull hum around me settled down and, while my inner ear told me I was moving, my nostrils placed a heavy bet on leather upholstery being nearby. I’d been tossed into the back seat of a car.

  "He" was driving, this I knew, because the smell of his sweat was unmistakable. Not unhealthy, in fact-- maybe too healthy. Smelled like a 24-hour gym: sweat, bare concrete and bleach. Yeah. That was about right.

  “She” said something to him, muttering, and I knew they were together. My Sorority She-Ra and The Mentor, of course, worked for the same folks.

  But, I had a new piece now. Professor Jepson had worked for Solomon-Bluth-- more likely a larger group, it appears-- and was terrified enough of them to blow his own his research facility to high hell and fake his death.

  He'd said to me on that horrible night: They’re here for it, but they won’t find it. They’ll never find it. But that doesn’t mean the rest of the world shouldn’t know it. It’s… it should be for the world, not for them.

  He found something for them, but realized almost too late it couldn't be theirs to have.

  What do you get for the man or woman who's got everything?

  Wealth, power, everything.

  The only thing that eludes them?

  Time.

  Sure, most of the world’s wealthiest don’t likely have dark designs, secret science labs and abductor-ninjas on their payroll.

  However, it seemed my new circle of anonymous BFFs did.

  And if their actions concerning me or my former professor were any indication, ruling the world would only be a part of their game plan.

  In his last moments, Professor Jepson-- the teacher with the squeaky clean chalkboard, the man who never wrote things down-- gave his secret to the one person he'd met who would never have to write it down either.

  A student he'd met with near-perfect audio recall.

  My mind snapped back to the present as I was being jostled in the back of an automobile. But my thoughts lingered for a moment on what Pavan had said back at the campus-- I'd had Jepson for three of my first four semesters? That wasn't an accident.

  Jepson had liked me, sure, I know that. But he'd kept me close-- judge my character, maybe? But, more than that.

  My guess, he was probably trying to find some way of carefully getting the sequence to the right people. Those who wouldn't abuse it. That would take time.

  But if, before he accomplished that, his former employer found him instead, they'd never find the sequence because he wouldn't have written it down, instead simply committing it to memory.

  He'd discovered the fountain of youth! Yet, he couldn't tell anyone, for fear that they would get to it before anyone else did.

  All of this-- the loss of my Ruthie, my life in ruins, The Mentor's torture-- all of it because of one small fact:

  I was simply Jepson's Plan B.

  The professor hadn't counted on, how could he?, the accident that would put a blind spot in my mind. Who knows? Maybe not being aware of the secret had kept me alive the past few years.

  We hit a pothole and a knock of the car’s frame through the seat brought me back to the present. We were on the interstate, but there wasn’t any indication of where we might be going.

  Laying quietly, I listened hoping they'd speak… maybe pick up something they--

  "Nice to see you're awake," he said. For a moment, I played possum. He sighed and added, "Your breathing changed. All rushed now. Stick to what you're good… being all sly and shit, you are not good at that, Dexter."

  "What are you doing?" she asked him with an edge to her voice.

  That's when I heard The Mentor's breathing change. Even for someone not "good at it," yep, I picked that one out.

  He said back to her, a short laugh, then, "Me and Dex, we go way back, I’m just trying--"

  "Well, don't. The less you flap your fucking gums the better."

  "Listen," he sa
id, calmly (I had learned with this man, that is not a good thing). "You and me, we ain't friends. I don't care what your last name is and I sure as hell don't care for you telling me how to conduct my business."

  She huffed. "You called that business? If that--"

  Clak, something in the front seat took a hit. My best guess, it was the rear view mirror. Sort of sounded like a rear view mirror.

  "Seriously, little girl. And, this is the last shred of calm that I have for this endeavor, so don't try me, sister. You don't tell me how to do my job, and I won't turn you inside out with my free hand. Trust me, I’ll do it and won’t even swerve," he said. The silence, then, was pure electricity. "I am very glad we have an understanding."

  We traveled in silence over the next twenty minutes-- only once did I hear him chuckling quietly to himself-- then there was a series of slow, short turns. The roads got even worse, which told me we were off the interstate.

  "Let me off at the gate," she said quietly, but her words were poison-tipped. "That okay?"

  "Yes, glad to be rid of ya."

  Less than a minute later, the car crunched to a stop on gravel, a door opened and slammed and we were off again.

  My heart picked up its pace a little. While he was mad at her, he wasn't pointing that anger toward me. Now, she was gone, I was his only target left.

  We'd been on gravel for a few minutes and, incrementally, the drive got more and more choppy. His window was down, he may have been looking for something, don't know. But it smelled rank. Like decay mixed with wet dog.

  "Take in that fresh evening air, Dexter," he said, and laughed. This was a guy who enjoyed his job, no question. "Who knows, given what’s ahead for you tonight, this may be the last time you get to do that. So breathe it in, Dex. Breathe deep."

  A few minutes later, we stopped, and I heard the window raise, close.

  The driver's side door opened and shut. Footsteps, moving away from me. They stopped, then came back.

  "We gotta walk a bit but," he said talking through the glass, pausing for a moment, "It's dark, the path here isn't so clear. And while, hell, you been living that way for a while… Me, I like to see where I’m going."

  I yelled back: "If you want, I can lead the way for you. You know, if you're scared."

  The Mentor laughed.

  "Listen, man, I don't care what you think or whatever comes of tonight. You probably won't live through it," he said, his voice dimming a little as he got farther and farther away from the car. "But, let's be clear, you were dead when I met ya. I was the best thing to happen to you in years."

  "Whatever,” I yelled, lying on the backseat, blind and bound. “You know, I got chlamydia two years ago and--”

  “Dexter, what the fu--!"

  “And you? You’re not the best thing to happen to me in years. You’re a couple fucking notches down from my dick burning when I peed."

  He laughed again. "Man, I will miss you." His voice getting smaller as he walked into the darkness. "I really will. Your hands are tied, the doors can't be opened from inside. So, sit tight, fat man. Be right back."

  I'd already begun to struggle against the plastic tie around my wrists but doubt slowed me. Was this another one of his tests?

  Over the next minute, the car got warm quickly with the windows up and I felt sweat raise up on my arms and wrists, maybe they would get slick enough to--

  A low clunk made me flinch, then a whoosh! tumbled across my skin, as the cold night air rushed in with the back door now popped open.

  Two hands grabbed my feet, yanked me out of the car and I fell to the ground, hard.

  "Shit!"

  I felt a hand at my face, twisting it upward. Above me, a wild-eyed, brown face.

  "Pavan?"

  "Dude, we gotta get the fuck outta here? Is that big sonovabitch you're guy?" he said, helping me out of the binds on my wrists. They were like the plastic ties police use and he sliced through with his pocket knife with a quick swipe.

  "Yeah," I said, rolling up into a crouch. "Where'd he go?"

  "He went down there," Pavan pointed to the dark. "Toward the old zoo."

  We moved around the back of the car, a black Lincoln and Pavan told me he'd seen me nabbed as he left the bathroom, got the car and was able to follow. Once he saw what exit they took, he backed off, knowing where they were headed.

  Pavan whispered, “We were broke as a kid. ‘Broker than the Ten Commandments,’ as mama used to say. So, this place was free until they closed it up. Maybe because it was free is because why they closed it up.”

  "Jesus," I said, trying to get a bead on our surroundings. "Any animals still here?"

  "Maybe squirrels or possums," Pavan said, reeking of dope. "But years ago, I damn near grew up here with the monkeys and lions and shit.”

  In the black ahead of us, I saw movement. The Mentor was coming back. Outta time.

  "Damn, there he is," I whispered.

  "Man oh man oh man."

  There was no way we'd out run him. Not a chance. And I wasn't going to get my friend hurt.

  "Get back to your car and head up the street, wherever, find a pay phone. Call Detective Clower at the Marietta police department."

  "That cop dude, why?"

  "Let him know I’m here," I said pushing my friend slowly. "Go man, or we're both nabbed."

  "But--"

  "We can't both out run him, no way. Call Clower, tell him where I am," I said, and choked a little. "Fuck man, what a rock star. I can't believe you followed us!"

  "All incognito, man," he said, then his smile faltered. "Come with me, man. Let's bolt!"

  I shook my head. "No way. We'd never made it. I'll get his attention, you get to Clower. Go!"

  Once Pavan had slipped back into the dark brush, I looked up and saw The Mentor heading my way. Now, I was all for making sure my friend didn't get caught but that didn't mean I would necessarily have to.

  Creeping the length of the car, I headed to the front. The moment he got close enough, he'd see the backseat minus one less me, and I'd be hard pressed to outrun the guy.

  Looking down the road, the moon barely helping, and the majority of my vision was hints of the gravel road and empty beer cans and waterlogged cardboard boxes. These were mostly faded 12-pack beer boxes of the “premium” variety: Busch, Miller, Keystone. If Hansel and Gretel had been real Germans, they’d have left a path like this into the woods (albeit, with much better beer).

  Small rocks sounded like popcorn snaps beneath my shoes, even as I moved as slow as possible.

  To my right, the car between me and him, a chain had long given way to either age or the people who'd littered all those empty beer cans everywhere. It lay, rusted and discarded, in dried out tire tracks that had sliced into a mantle of mud.

  Above us, I saw why it was so jet-black dark: the canopy of trees had gotten thick. The moonlight came in tendrils through rotted-earth air and the branches of dead and dying trees.

  I’d read a book some time ago about people who make decisions, take action, in the blink of an eye—not the time it takes to blink, but rather, the moment they blink. Something inside them weighs the options, the opportunities, the assets and liabilities, and then makes an instant choice in a blink.

  Closer now, my tormentor was preoccupied with the phone in his hand as he walked closer. He didn't strike me as the kind that would be texting his BFF or checking actor Nathan Fillion’s twitter feed. I was pretty sure he was doing something that would eventually cause me ample amounts of pain, like plugging some coordinates into its GPS for the next "lesson."

  Quickly, less nosily, I moved back to the rear of the car and could now hear his footfalls on the gravel. He was on the road.

  Not even fully considering my actions-- blink-- I spun out, rolled forward and used my considerable weight to plow my shoulder hard into the upper right thigh of The Mentor.

  The satisfying crack I heard wouldn’t immobilize him but would slow him down for a few seconds. Momentum propelli
ng me, I spun again as he went down, and my feet came down hard on the flesh of the man beneath me as I ran, but I was not just pumping my legs to get away, I was trying to hurt the son-of-a-bitch.

  He'd not said a word but, on the ground beneath my heels for only a second, he finally let out a satisfying "uuunnnffff."

  Before he could reach up for me, I rushed into the darkness and out of the light.

  Pitch black; still I raced forward sure that the sound of his own footfalls would be on me in a second. My eyes quickly began to adjust to the night, and it occurred to me that the bright glow from his phone’s screen may have done just the opposite for him. For a few seconds, maybe, that could give me an advantage… or at least a small chance.

  There was a ragged path to my right-- dead grass, dirt and stones-- and I took it. Ahead, the dark hinted at some light: an odd, vertical pooling of moonlight that looked like I was being watched by a huge, dirty glass eye.

  Coming on it fast, some fifty feet away now and my breaths digging deeper into my body, just waiting to feel the steel grip of his fingers at my shoulder blades, I could see on the other side of this glass there was another path, this one much wider and made from concrete. Terrified, my mind filled with images of visitors, just paper-thin specters forever trotting along as they held hands and corndogs, checking out the zoo animals. Except, this night these ghosts, indifferent, were looking at me.

  I charged toward the glass, closing the distance quickly, my eyes scanned for a break or an open door to take me onto the other side.

  Behind me, a fumbling and crash. The Mentor had leapt up and was pursuing me, but now had fallen or slammed into a tree or row of brush.

  My lungs burned hot as I pumped my arms and legs, heading down the path; I didn’t dare turn around, I didn’t dare slow down. Full sprint with everything I had left.

  There! I could see the moonlight reflecting off small puddles of water on the path just beyond the spider-webbed glass. Crossing in front of it, on a small, dusty cement ledge, desperately searching for a way to the other side, I only saw holes, the size of angry fists—but nothing I could slip through.

  Reaching the end of the ledge— blink— I was leaping, twisting, rolling toward the large dog-eared gap at the top of the Plexiglas where many drunken kids had probably tumbled through over the years as they headed deeper into the zoo.