Defenders of Shadow and Light: Ghost Thief

by Jason Levine

  The communication cut out. Murray packed up his remaining supplies and held the bag close as he ghosted. The last remnants of the Sun were visible above the horizon. Soon, it would be dark. Or at least as dark as cities ever became. Murray knew he could count on plenty of street lights to help guide him.

  It took him awhile, but he finally found Langmuir Road. The buildings on this street were the exact opposite of the ones where Murray lived. Where those looked like they might fall down any second, these looked like they had just been built. Murray didn’t know much about architecture, but he guessed that they were actually quite old–or were meant to look old–but well taken care of. Whoever he was supposed to see was obviously wealthy.

  Murray landed in an alleyway across the street from 28 Langmuir Road. Even the alleyways seemed cleaner in this neighborhood. There were no open garbage cans, overflowing with trash. No sign of any stray cats seeking a meal–either from the trash can or from wandering rodents. No graffiti scribbled on the walls proclaiming that this was some gang’s territory.

  Murray began to walk out of the alley and then stopped. He couldn’t help his suit, but he figured that approaching the doorman in full mask and goggles would result in a call for the police. He retracted his breathing mask and activated his watch’s dampener feature so that he didn’t ghost while talking to the guard. Murray also took off the goggles and cloth mask portion of his work suit. These he tucked into a pocket as best he could.

  He began to walk towards the street but stumbled. Suddenly, he felt very light headed and the world seemed to be spinning. He looked down at his arm and saw his makeshift bandage coated in blood.

  Murray pushed himself forward. Making sure that no traffic was coming, he walked into the street. He made it across the two lane road, but tripped on the curb. Murray barely was able to put his hands in front of himself as he fell. Pain shot up his injured arm. He tried to stand, but couldn’t. Murray dragged himself across the ground to the doorman.

  The doorman spotted Murray and raced to his side. He took out a phone and began to dial 911.

  “143H,” Murray said, feeling his consciousness fading.

  “I beg your pardon?” the doorman asked.

  “I need apartment 143H,” Murray told him. For a second, Murray feared that he had the wrong building and the doorman would call an ambulance or the police. Then, the doorman canceled his call and dialed another number.

  “Yes. Someone’s here to see you. Please hurry. He’s bleeding quite badly.”

  Murray fought to stay awake but could tell it was a losing battle. As he blacked out, he saw a woman racing out of the building towards him.

  Chapter Twenty: Heidi The Healer

  Murray slowly awoke from his dreamless state. At first, he was confused. He remembered being on the sidewalk, but it didn’t feel like pavement under him. Instead, he was on something very soft. As his consciousness returned, he realized he was in a bed. His first thought was that the doorman called the police and he was in a hospital bed. This might have panicked Murray had he the mental strength to feel panic. He soon realized that this bed was softer than any hospital bed. The sheets and blanket were more comfortable than anything he had ever felt before. No hospital would spring for such luxuries.

  As his head cleared, Murray remembered his wound. He hoped that he wasn’t bleeding all over this obviously expensive bedding. If he were more alert, he might have laughed at the prospect of worrying about being a bad guest as he bled out on a stranger’s bed.

  Murray realized that his injured arm was being held by someone. There was pressure on it as the person squeezed their fingers into his wound, but for some reason he didn’t feel any pain. In fact, with every passing second he felt stronger. Murray opened his eyes and saw a woman sitting on a chair by his bed. She seemed to be in her mid-40s. Her blonde hair was speckled with gray. A towel on her lap was stained with some of Murray’s blood.

  Murray was most surprised by the woman’s hands and arm. Her hands glowed softly as she pressed her fingers on his wound. He could actually see the gash on his arm closing up. Meanwhile, bandages on the woman’s arm started turning red.

  “Who are you?” Murray asked, still feeling weak but much stronger than he had since passing out.

  “My name is Heidi Heylin. How are your feeling?”

  “Much better. How did you do that?” Murray asked, attempting to get out of the bed.

  “Not so fast,” Heidi said, stopping Murray. “You’re mostly healed but you still need to rest a bit longer.”

  Heidi pointed to a corner of the room where Murray’s backpack was sitting along with his work suit–the torn arm stained red with Murray’s own blood.

  “Considering that this looks like Sean’s handiwork I think you know how I healed you.”

  Murray looked at Heidi’s arm. The red on her bandage was spreading.

  “Your arm…”

  “Ah. There’s always a tradeoff. No power comes without limitations. In my case, I can heal others of their injuries and illnesses, but I take that into my own body. Don’t worry about me, though. I heal quickly. For something like this, I should be fully recovered in a day or two. Now rest.”

  Murray struggled to get up.

  “I… I can’t. My friends are in danger. I need to do something to help them. Before tomorrow night.”

  A sickening realization dawned on Murray.

  “Wait. How long was I out?”

  “Don’t worry. You were only out for a couple of hours. We already know about your friends. You can help them tomorrow. For now, you rest.”

  Murray passed out quickly. In his dreams, he was back in Sampson Technologies. He was running through the corridors. He didn’t know what he was running from, but he knew that it was getting closer. Then, a figure wearing a dark suit turned the corner, his hands folded behind his back. His contorted face rippled as leeches wriggled out of it, crawled around his body, and oozed back into it. The General.

  “Did you think you could get away?” the General sneered.

  Murray ran down hallway after hallway looking for a way out. He glanced back and the General was casually strolling down the hallway after him. No matter how fast Murray ran, the General seemed to keep pace with him while not expending any effort. Murray ducked into a room and bolted the door shut. He backed up and tried to catch his breath, looking around for an exit or at least a weapon to use against his pursuer. All he saw were computer monitors and a passage leading to a familiar looking darkened room.

  Murray looked back at the bolted door in time to see leeches squeezing under the door frame. They trickled in slowly, amassing on the other side as they took on human shape. Murray ran into the darkened room and tried to close the door. The General grabbed hold of the door and pried it open. Murray tripped as he jumped backwards and tried to move to the far side of the room. As the General walked into the room, the darkness swirled around him.

  “Protect! Defend!”

  Shadow was in here. Murray looked at his hand. One of his explosive charges was in it. On a whim, he tossed it in the air. When it exploded, the room’s power dampener activated. Shadow and the General vanished. The dampener began to flash on and off repeatedly. Murray collapsed in pain. He woke up screaming and drenched in sweat.

  Murray sat up and moved his feet off the bed. He looked down at himself. When Heidi removed his work suit, she had put him into expensive looking silk pajamas. Murray looked down at his arm. There was a small scar, but otherwise little sign that he had been injured so severely the previous day.

  Murray stood up and surveyed the room. In the light of day, the bed looked even more expensive than it felt the night before. The extremely comfortable bedding was laid on top of a queen sized bed with a large mattress and an ornately carved mahogany headboard. Around the room, similarly ornate dressers and nightstands filled the room. On one nightstand, sat a curved golden lamp. Even the carpet seemed extremely plush.

  Murray smelled the air. The scents
of bacon, toast, and coffee reached his nose and his stomach rumbled. He remembered his dinner the previous night of crackers he had stolen from the pharmacy. His stomach rumbled again, not so much asking for food as demanding that he get some.

  Murray walked out of his room and found his way to the kitchen. A man was standing with his back to Murray. He was easily six feet tall with red hair. He wore jeans and a green long sleeved shirt. On his wrists and ankles were familiar looking bracelets that glowed blue.

  Murray’s stomach growled again with the sight, sounds, and smells of the breakfast this man was making. Eggs and bacon sizzled in frying pans while pancakes cooked on a griddle. A toaster popped up four slices of toast. He placed them on a plate already containing a good eight slices of toast. He placed four more slices in and then turned to face Murray.

  “Good morning. Glad to see you up and about. Would you like some breakfast?”

  “Um… Thanks,” Murray said as a plate containing three pancakes, three fried eggs, a couple slices of toast, and a few slices of bacon was set before him. Murray looked at his food. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude, but who are you?”

  The man flipped some pancakes sizzling on an electric griddle and removed eggs from a frying pan.

  “Did I forget to introduce myself? Sorry about that. I’m a bit distracted by all the cooking. My name is William Foyt, I believe you met my wife last night.”

  “Heidi?”

  “That’s her. Quick tip, don’t mention the alliteration in her name. Her parents were big fans of it but it’s a sore subject for her.”

  William picked up a pitcher containing pancake batter. It was almost empty, but by the batter clinging to the sides, Murray could tell that it had been nearly filled recently. The stack of pancakes on a plate near the griddle confirmed this. William emptied the pitcher onto the griddle. He placed the empty pitcher into the sink.

  “Is all this food for just the three of us?”

  William laughed. “You’re welcome to eat as much as you like, but most of this food is for Heidi.”

  “She can eat that much?”

  “Not always. Most days, she eats the same amount that any normal person would. Maybe even less. But when she’s recovering from healing someone, her body goes into overdrive. She does almost nothing but sleep and eat as her body speeds through whatever injury or illness she’s taken on. With something like your arm, this should be more than enough, but I’d rather freeze the extra than be caught without enough.”

  Murray remembered the bandages on Heidi’s arm turning red as his arm’s gash appeared on her arm.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that this would hurt her.”

  “Don’t be sorry. She loves doing this. Before she was given powers, she was a nurse. She said that the worst part of the job was the feeling of helplessness when there was nothing they could do for a patient. When she first got her gift, she used it to heal a few ‘there’s nothing we can do’ cases. Luckily, nobody figured out it was her doing this. They chalked it up to everything from beating the odds to exceptional care to divine intervention.”

  Murray dug into his pancakes and eggs. It might have been William’s cooking or just the fact that Murray hadn’t eaten much the previous day, but they tasted exceptional.

  “Why did you say that it was lucky nobody knew it was her? If it were me, I’d probably go public immediately. You could make a lot of money healing people who had no other hope.”

  “You definitely could, but you’ve got to remember the trade-off. She can’t just walk from patient to patient healing them. She would take on the patient’s illness until her body could heal. One cancer patient healing could take her a week to recover from. That’s not so bad compared to actually dealing with cancer, but thousands, if not millions, of people would be banging down her door demanding that she heal their loved ones. Unfortunately, she would only be able to handle about fifty people a year and that’s assuming she didn’t heal any other types of injury or illness. It wouldn’t be fair to those people to give them hope of a miracle cure only to restrict it so much. It also wouldn’t be fair to her to put her through that constant recovery.”

  Murray finished more of his eggs and mopped up some of the yolk with a slice of toast.

  “Besides,” William continued. “If word got out of her abilities, you know who would detain her for ‘study.’”

  Murray crunched on some bacon. “Who?”

  William looked up at Murray with a quizzical look on his face.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “Hasn’t Sean told you about our ‘origin story’ as he loves to title it?”

  “We’ve had a few interruptions,” Murray replied.

  “They must have been pretty big interruptions,” William said, pulling the last pancake off the griddle and shutting everything off. “Sean loves telling this story. He’d probably be really upset if I told it to you instead of him.”

  William plated some food for him and sat down opposite Murray. For a minute or two, he silently munched on his food as Murray looked at him expectantly. Just as Murray was turning his attention back to his unfinished breakfast, William broke the silence.

  “It all started about twenty-five years ago...”

  Chapter Twenty One: Secret Origins

  William picked up a cup of coffee and took a long sip. He started to put it down, but stopped and looked into the inky black liquid.

  “Back then, Sean and I were part of a group investigating various technologies for scientific and military value. There were quite a few very interesting items. It’s ironic that the least promising specimen turned out to have the biggest impact.”

  William took a few bites of his breakfast before continuing.

  “It was a small chunk of meteorite. About three feet wide. It had crashed in the American Southwest a few years prior. Some locals had recovered it from the crash site and donated it to a museum where it sat in storage for study.

  “So far, there was nothing out of the ordinary about this. The thing was, though, weird things seemed to happen around it. Broken coffee mugs would spontaneously piece themselves back together or sensitive equipment would fall to pieces all on their own. It wasn’t predictable and nothing we could do could prove that the meteorite was responsible. We certainly didn’t know of any mechanism that would cause these events. All we had to go on were a lot of coincidences centering on this meteorite.”

  William stabbed a piece of pancake and looked at it as if he were unsure of what to do with it. He put it in his mouth and chewed for a minute before continuing.

  “Our boss, Colonel Rubin Algitsh, wanted us to figure out how the meteorite was doing this so he could weaponize it. He envisioned a beam that could disassemble an enemy’s weapons systems from miles away or that could intercept incoming missiles and render them harmless. We saw it as a scientific puzzle. We were young and naive about how the world worked. We actually thought that we’d be doing the world a favor by unlocking this secret. It’s embarrassing, really, when I look back on it.

  “Like I said, though, it was our least promising subject. Nothing we could do could prove that any of the strange occurrences were due to the meteorite. None of our tests could tease even the tiniest of clues to how these things could happen. In fact, nothing odd had happened since we took custody of it. As much as we wanted to find something really ground-breaking, it seemed like this was just an ordinary hunk of space rock around which grew some tall tales. It might have been interesting from an astronomical standpoint, but there didn’t seem to be anything there that was going to change the world.”

  William moved one of his eggs on top of a piece of toast and cut into it. Yolk oozed off of the toast and onto his plate.

  “We had actually been about to give up on it. We had one more test scheduled. Colonel Algitsh was pressing us to crack the meteorite’s secrets, but our final report was all but written: Completely ordinary, no military or scienti
fic potential. He insisted on one more test to determine once and for all whether this meteorite hid anything useful.

  “It was to be our final day of study of the meteorite before moving on. We were powering up our equipment to do one final scan when Sean noticed a crack in the meteorite. As he touched it, a chunk fell off and we saw metal. Not just metal, but ornately carved, shiny metal. The really odd thing was we had scanned this thing six ways to Sunday. Nothing even remotely approaching this had ever shown up on any of the scans. Like I said, we were young and naive. We trusted our equipment more than our own eyes.”

  William paused. He put his silverware down and rubbed his eyes.

  “Suddenly, this wasn’t just any chunk of rock. Now, there was something interesting about it. We carefully chipped away at the surrounding rock and revealed a small sphere just under a foot in diameter. It was made of a shiny, gold colored metal. The entire surface had lines and curves engraved on it.

  “We couldn’t figure out whether there was a pattern to the carvings so we decided to load images of them into a computer. As Sean wrote the code to do the pattern matching, I set up equipment to take detailed photos of the object’s surface. The weirdest thing happened, though. As I scanned the thing, the lines shifted. It wasn’t by much and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it just by looking at it, but the 3D model’s photos didn’t match up. We took some videos and confirmed that they were moving.

  “Our boss was ecstatic. He had long been searching for something mysterious. Something powerful. He was convinced more than ever that this was what he had been seeking. He pushed us to move quicker. To unlock its secrets. He was determined that this would make his career.”

  William picked up a piece of bacon and crunched into it.

  “We asked for more resources. More staff and more equipment. The equipment he was able to provide, but the staff seemed to be a problem. He insisted that all of his other staff were pursuing other leads and he couldn’t spare anyone. In hindsight, we should have been suspicious of this. How excited he was over what we had found versus the lack of additional manpower he was willing to commit to it. Like I said, though, we were young and naive.