**
It didn’t seem like such a great plan now that he was sitting behind Christian, a laptop with a webcam and streaming video in his lap. But everyone had agreed and there really was no backing out now. Mr. Hansen’s illusionary Madeline was lounging on a couch in the back of her business/apartment, headphones on, sound turned way up.
Hugo’s phone vibrated, it was time. The candles in the main room flickered as if they were following something towards the backroom, but the silence stretched on. Hugo shifted. What if the shadow guy had seen them and now they were leaving? He wanted to call Maggie and ask if they were still there, but she wasn’t exactly working for them and he really didn’t want to bother her. There was a slight fizzling sound, and then the florescent lights of the night poured into the front room of Madeline’s business. Slowly Gregori and the other man, whose abilities really could have been anything, entered. He really should have thought this through better; what if the guy could shoot lasers, or something worse?
Christian turned to marble just as the two men were entering the fortunetelling room, and Hugo took that as his cue. All the candles snuffed out as he vacuumed the room. Both men dropped with muffled thuds a moment later. The room brightened as CJ leapt out of the floor, pointing to a wall with an electric arm, and then she jumped into the wall herself. The shadow guy was running. The marble head of security walked up to the two prone figures, and methodically shot them both in the head, he also shot the disintegrator’s hands for good measure. Bullet wounds didn’t look like they did on TV or in the movies; it was a lot worse. Hugo looked away, his stomach turning. But these people would have killed Madeline simply because she’d tried to do the right thing. They deserved it. He’d have to get used to this. Hugo turned, forcing himself to stare at the mangled heads. He discovered even if he hadn’t seen it first hand, he could have guessed the entry wounds and the position of the shooter based entirely on the splatter.
Christian turned back into a human form, watching him with a hint of confusion in his expression.
“CJ went after the third guy,” Hugo offered instead of answering the unspoken question. At that moment his cell phone rang. It was CJ.
“Shadow guy totally stabbed me!” Her voice broke slightly, “The lab techs said I couldn’t get hurt! They lied!”
Hugo’s entire body went ridged and he felt cold all of a sudden. Oh god he was going to get her killed. “Are you ok?!”
“No!” She exclaimed, exasperated, “I got stabbed!
“Is he still there? CJ, you have to-”
“Don’t worry, I got him,” she said firmly.
Hugo’s heart sank. That’s not what he’d meant at all, but could she expect anymore of him? “Where are you?”
“I’m a few blocks away, hold on one sec,” the line went static, and when she returned she gave him a street address. Christian was already on his phone calling a cleanup crew for their mess. Mr. Gideon had given them a lift to Madeline’s place, so they had to run down the street to catch up with CJ. After some B&E on Christian’s part, they managed to get up to the roof of the apartment building. CJ was sitting on the blacktop, a black, curved blade sticking out of the back of her shoulder. Hugo ran over to her. Blood was seeping out of the wound, but the blade itself had stopped most of the flow. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Christian reaching for his gun.
“Wait,” Hugo hissed angrily; what kind of jackass would shoot someone in front of a little girl? He pulled out his phone and dialed Mr. Gideon’s number.
“Hugo! What can I do for you? Did everything go well?” Mr. Gideon’s voice was peppered with concern.
Hugo tried to keep his voice civil, but he didn’t feel like he was doing a convincing job, “Yeah, everything’s fine. But CJ got hurt, can you give us a lift to the medical wing, I don’t want to move her too much.”
“Oh no! CJ was hurt? Is she going to be alright? Where are you?” The man sounded positively distraught. Hugo doubted he actually was.
“She’ll be fine.” Hugo recited the address and a moment later they could see the appropriately concerned expression on Mr. Gideon’s face. Hugo carefully helped CJ to her feet through a series of short grunts. She was in a lot of pain, but trying to hide it. He wanted to apologize. He should have told her to wait, or leave the shadow guy alone, but instead he’d let her go because he hadn’t wanted any of them to survive to try again. And now they wouldn’t.
Once they’d managed to gingerly step through the portal, Mr. Gideon redirected it to one of the rooms in the medical wing. Dr. McFadden was waiting for them. “I took the liberty of letting her know the situation,” Mr. Gideon explained, “Feel better soon, CJ.”
CJ gave the CEO a bright smile, “Thanks!”
Mr. Gideon waved back, and then he was gone.
Hugo helped CJ up on the table, and then quickly backed away.
The doctor filled the space, calm and professional, “Why don’t you tell me what happened CJ?”
“Ok!” she perked up, “Ok, so there was this guy, and he was all shadowy and stuff and fell through the floor, and I thought, ‘hey I can do that too!’ so I decided to follow him. He was ok after Hugo vacuumed the room and he just turned into shadow like a ninja or something.”
“Really?” Dr. McFadden carefully rubbed the anesthetic around the wound, “then what happened.”
“Then I followed the ninja through the building, and the street, and everything. I’m a lot faster than he was though, so I went ahead of him to try and cut him off. I guess he can take stuff with him too when he becomes shadow, because we ran into each other and I was like ‘ZAP!’ and then I became solid and there was a knife in my shoulder and the guy was twitching on the ground.”
“I’m impressed, CJ. Here, hold this,” Crysta handed the girl the curved dagger before moving back behind to sew up the wound. She glanced around her, then her eyes met Hugo’s and she smiled almost shyly as she touched her hand to the wound, “Oh, this isn’t nearly as bad as I thought it might be. It looks like you managed to miss the worst of the blade, CJ. Good job.”
CJ was examining the curved dagger with morbid fascination, stopping just short of running her finger along the sharp edge, “Wow, this thing is awesome. Can I keep it? Like as a trophy?”
The doctor giggled as she sewed up the remaining wound. Hugo couldn’t tell what she’d done to it, but it had probably been a lot deeper. “Well, I don’t know about that. You’ll probably want to talk to Christian. It seems a little dangerous to be carrying around.”
“Oh no, I don’t need it. I’d just uh, like keep it in a box or something.”
Crysta shrugged, “Oh, well, I don’t see why not then.”
“Cool!” CJ grinned and went back to examining the knife, “The guy really was like a ninja or something. I beat him too. Does that make me a ninja? I know I’m not Japanese or anything, but I was faster than him, and I caught him, and I thought ninjas don’t get caught.”
“No…I don’t think that makes you a ninja CJ,” Crysta shook her head slowly as she put a bandage over the stitching, “But that does mean that other guy was a really bad one.”
“No kidding!” The teen nodded, “He was like…a shadow and stuff, which is what ninjas are supposed to be like, but I totally saw him!”
“You did, good job,”
They both looked completely relaxed, like CJ had maybe inconveniently scraped her knee. But she’d been stabbed badly enough that the doctor would risk exposure by healing her. What if the blade had been inserted a few inches to the left? It could have punctured something important, CJ could have been dying instead of being mildly inconvenienced. She wasn’t supposed to get hurt. She couldn’t get hurt. But he’d managed to put her in a situation where she could have been killed.
His phone vibrated, it was Christian. Hugo stepped out into the hall to take the call. “Yeah?”
“Thought you’d like to know, one of the guys is gone.”
Hugo blinked, “What? Gregori-”<
br />
“No, the other guy. Just disappeared. Before the team showed up, his body vanished.”
Hugo’s hand squeezed on the phone, “Shit.”
“I think we’ve got another problem, actually,” Christian’s tone suggested more amusement than anything else, however, “I recognized the shadow guy. He’s from the Yakuza, but he gets loaned out on occasion. He’s the son of the Dragon, I think. I’m not sure though, I’ve only ever seen him once before.”
Hugo sucked air through his teeth, running his free hand through his hair, “Ok, do you think they’ll take this personally?”
“Maybe?” The head of security still sounded amused.
“Ugh. Do you think the Russian mob is going to take this personally?”
Christian laughed a little. He didn’t seem particularly concerned about conflict with either the Yakuza or the Russians. And maybe they could handle one, but both? “Maybe?”
Hugo grumbled, “Ok, it looks like we have some people to visit. Let me know when you get back. We’ll talk.” They hung up and Hugo ran his hands through his hair again. Crap. Why hadn’t he thought of that? Of course there would be repercussions for killing someone tied to a criminal organization. He just hoped it was possible to convince them that it wasn’t anything personal and that Gregori had actually started it, and it had only been in defense. Holy crap, was he seriously thinking about talking to the heads of powerful criminal organizations about killing their relatives and thought he could get away with it? And then there was the problem with the disappearing guy. Had he somehow managed to survive his head turning into paste, or had Mary teleported his body somewhere? Was there another option? They were dealing with people with a wide range of powers, it could be any number of things.
Dr. McFadden stepped out into the hallway, followed closely by CJ, both of their expressions were serious. “The patients want to…speak to you now. Are you ready?”
Hugo shrugged; he’d almost forgotten. “Sure.”
Me too. Clem smiled as he approached them, his hands in his pockets.
“You’re coming too?” The man nodded at Hugo’s question, “I guess that makes sense. What about Mr. Hansen?”
The doctor looked to the side for a brief moment, but then returned her attention to him, “He, respectfully declined. He doesn’t think he needs to be involved in this.”
He didn’t want it to, but his heart sank, sending a cold chill through his body. It wasn’t a big deal. Crysta touched his arm lightly. He started walking towards the patients’ shared room. It was a long room with ten beds on each side. Some of the patients were sitting up, but many were still too weak from being in a coma for nearly two years to manage that; the room was alive with the soft bleeps of medical equipment.
A cold, flat thought invaded his mind, Hugo Meyers, we’ve been expecting you. This thought was different however, the feel of it flickered and wavered slightly, like the statement was torn and fuzzy around the edges. That’s because you hear us all.
Alright, so I’m here. Now what? It was pointless to try and seem patient; he just wanted to get it over with.
And we will. Just wait.
“Weird! Cut that out!” CJ waved her hands above her head like she was swatting flies, “Can’t you guys just talk like normal people?” She stuck her tongue out, than blinked, glancing around, “Ok, did I piss you guys off, because now I can’t hear you.”
The doctor raised a hand to her lips, looking to the girl, “They say you give them only static, they can’t get through to you.”
The girl raised her arms above her head, grinning, “Ha ha! I win.” She dropped her hands though, and then tilted her head slightly to the side, “But seriously you guys, if I’m going to get to be part of this trial thingy, do I have to do the telepathy stuff? Can’t I just talk?”
“They can’t speak yet, but they’ll listen. I guess that means you’re going first,” Crysta translated.
Hugo shifted, stuffing his hands into his pockets.
CJ regarded the beds, “Ok, so what do you want to know?”
Dr. McFadden frowned slightly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “They want to know, from your perspective, what happened at the hospital in Canada.”
“Oh, ok. Well, um…Hugo was being dumb, because he thought it would be better for him to go see Mr. Hansen’s brother by himself. He was like worried about him changing my thoughts or something, but now I’m thinking maybe he wouldn’t have been able to do that.
“But anyway, he was being dumb and I found out, so I told him to come back. But he didn’t listen, he just said,” her voice dropped in imitation, taking on a rather unflatteringly snooty tone, “I guess I’ll just have to change my tactic.” She dropped the voice, “or something like that. But it amounted to him still being stupid. So…”
The girl scratched the back of her head, mussing her hair as she stared at the ceiling for several seconds. “Ok, then I told Mr. Hansen what was going on, and let him read Hugo’s note.” She turned briefly towards him, “sorry Hugo. And then Mr. Hansen said he was going to send Christian. But that was taking entirely too long, so I ran over there as lightning. I’m really fast, so it didn’t take very long.
"Oops, I forgot to mention that I had to call Maggie, she can find people, to tell me where she’d told Hugo to go. Because he hadn’t told me, so I didn’t know. Anyway…” she looked perplexed for a second and then her eyes brightened. “Oh right. So I got there, and there were monkeys everywhere. I mean like jumping on stuff and yelling. And there was a lot of, well, you know, dead people. So I found Hugo, and he was staring at this guy…" CJ contemplated the ceiling for a moment, "yeah, I guess that would be Mr. Hansen’s brother. And he told me to go get the other two monkeys, I’d zapped ten of them at this point. He was being kinda bossy, but he’d been there longer than me, so I figured he knew what was going on, so I went and found them. One of them was…” she leaned towards the beds and lowered her voice a little, “crying. It was really creepy. Or else it was a trick, so I zapped it.” She shook her head and then shrugged, “Then Christian showed up and we left. And that’s it.”
There was a lengthy pause, and then Dr. McFadden looked startled, which fell into irritation, “I will not ask that question!” Her declaration was followed by another, shorter pause. Then she turned back to CJ, “They asked you how you feel about Hugo. If you-” The doctor looked incredibly angry for a second, her mouth drawn down, eyes dark, “No, I will not say that. Unless you plan on speaking yourselves, you’re just going to have to let me ask the question the way I want to,” another pause, “Oh. I guess I didn’t have to say that out loud…or that…” She sighed, “Would you just like to answer the question, CJ?” CJ and Clem were staring at the doctor with amusement. She blushed a little.
CJ scrutinized him for several moments, and then grinned, “Hugo’s dumb sometimes, but he’s my best friend. I’m going to help him save the world.”
Dr. McFadden nodded, an approving smile on her face, “They thank you for your input CJ. I guess that makes it your turn, Clem.”
“I guess it does,” he said thoughtfully, turning his attention to the row of beds. He watched them carefully, a small smile creeping over his face a few times. Then he glanced at Hugo, raising his eyebrows a bit. Then shrugged. Hugo slouched a little more. The doctor straightened, returning her attention to the patients. Her conversation didn’t last nearly as long; she’d probably told them everything she wanted them to hear already.
And now it’s your turn. Will you show us what happened? We heard you are very thorough.
Hugo took a deep breath, trying to relax. I remember everything. So how does this work?
Just think about what happened. Try and start at the beginning. He didn’t want to think about what happened, every time he did he would get cold and his stomach would tighten. Do it.
He started at the beginning. They didn’t interrupt, and by the end he was thankful his hands were in his pockets already because they wer
e shaking and he thought he might puke. He had trouble stopping, he picked through bits of the event, pointing out all the places where he’d gone wrong, they told him he could stop, but he couldn’t.
Do you think you deserve to live while William lays buried? The question felt like a calm ocean hiding a vicious undertow.
It was the easiest thing they’d asked for, and his answer was given before the thought was finished. No.
Wait. He waited. Dr. McFadden was lightly touching his arm, her expression concerned.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled. CJ started wandering down the row of beds, glancing, without interest, at the charts attached to the foot of them. Clem watched her wander, his expression undecipherable.
We’ve reached our decision. Hugo held his breath. One of them could set people on fire with a thought, this could get messy. We’re not going to kill you. My brother, an empath, says you suffer enough already. There is nothing worse we could do to you, even if we wanted to. Besides, you did what you thought was right.
Apparently everyone else but CJ had heard that, because the doctor immediately relaxed and Clem just smiled slightly.
“CJ, the trial’s over,” Dr. McFadden said, a note of relief in her voice.
CJ walked back towards them, eyes curious, “Did we win?”
“We did,” Crysta responded, her voice almost light.
CJ threw her hand in the air, “Awesome!”
He knew he should leave the room, they were done. He didn’t need to be there anymore. It was over. The sick feeling didn’t go away, it got worse.
You can go. The command was mixed with a measure of amusement and pity, they didn’t seem to go together, but they reached the same conclusion. Hugo did as he was told.
CJ caught up with him before he could make it very far however. “Shouldn’t we go tell Madeline she’s all saved now?” The girl asked, tilting her head up at him.
Hugo blinked a few times, “Uh…yeah….I…”
CJ huffed slightly, “Ok. I’ll do it. You’d just make it sound boring anyway.”
Hugo was too slow to respond, so the girl bounded down the hallway. He stared blankly after her, his thoughts tangled in a train wreck.
The Sound of Wind Page 57
