A Mission Remembered

by Tanner Froreich

  I immediately sped up the rate at which I saw things and traced the lasers all the way back to their sources. Knowing if I was too slow, Phineas would die, I rocketed off near the speed of sound. As soon as I was a safe distance away, I broke that barrier. If I hadn’t, Phineas and Rufus would have become permanently deaf.

  I zoomed to the various locations around the immediate area where snipers were frozen in time. Also, with a slight push, they became frozen in air, weapons dismantled. A few of the snipers ended up being just simple laser pointers, apparently IODINE was looking to save some money.

  I was back at the bus stop in a flash and realized that the bottom of my shoes had burned off again, leaving me with just toe coverings. I leaned up against a pole and said, “You were saying?”

  Rufus scornfully smiled. “You don’t understand who you are dealing with.”

  “No, I don’t. You’re a five-foot something size dude with a lot of attitude who works for an evil agency.” I was shocked at the sheer arrogance coming from my mouth.

  “I wasn’t talking about me. IODINE is not just some agency; it’s a collection of the greatest minds in the world – ran by the greatest. You should be honored that he’s taken interest, as he did not even bother getting involved in the last super’s capture, but for some reason, he’s fascinated by you. It’ll probably make a good book or movie when it’s over.”

  “What are you talking about, Rufus?” Phineas chimed in. “Who is this great Mind?”

  “He came along after you left.” He sounded as if he knew he’d won. “He’s also the one who predicted that your quick friend would get cocky and lean up against that pole.”

  At his comment, I noticed that I couldn’t move the arm against the pole. Somehow I was stuck to it with an incredibly strong adhesive. How’d they know I would lean against this specific pole in this specific place?

  “Care to go Phineas? It’s been awhile since we’ve sparred,” he said as he took an offensive stance.

  Phineas shook his head. He didn’t want to fight, but he had little choice. “Rufus, you don’t want to do this. Has it been so long that you forgot I trained you along with many of your peers?”

  He shrugged. “You assume I stopped training.”

  He jumped at Phineas with a volley of kicks and punches. Phineas, however, blocked and redirected each blow without much effort. The few people who were still in the area now ran out as the two martial artists fought around the bus station.

  “This is futile.” He grunted as he grabbed his wrist and flipped him onto his back. “You may have trained, but you are still too slow. In all my years, only three people have been faster than me.”

  Rufus didn’t give up. He kept trying to fight, but Phineas evaded with minimal retaliation.

  He began to tire, and that is when Phineas attacked. With a speed that rivaled most men’s, he quickly overpowered him and had him in a choke hold.

  He gasped, “End it old fool!”

  “I have a question.”

  “I’m not going to answer.”

  “If your leader is as smart as you say, why would he send only you?”

  He popped something that was in his mouth and replied, “His reasons, for the good of the Cause.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.” He tried to get him to talk, but whatever was in his mouth, it started working. He foamed at the mouth and then went limp.

  “Cyanide?” he exclaimed in shock.

  “What is this?” I asked aloud. “IODINE is instructing agents to commit suicide?”

  He laid his body on the ground. “To protect sensitive information or show us just how serious this new leader is.”

  “Mr. Bordeaux, even with all his faults, doesn’t seem like the one to command people to kill themselves.”

  He wiped some foam off his arm. “It’s not him. He said he came after I left. I personally knew him as a younger agent, and he had a genuine care for his agents. This new guy is reckless.”

  “What kind of mess have I gotten myself into,” I said as I tried to pull myself off the pole. IODINE was much more dangerous than I had thought, and this was just the beginning.

  “We have to get out of here before law enforcement gets here,” Phineas said as he began rummaging through random bags people had left.

  I didn’t understand. “Why wouldn’t they be able to help us? We didn’t kill him.”

  He pulled a can of hairspray from a woman’s bag. “You’d be surprised who IODINE could frame. They could make it look like a rabbit mauled him if they wanted, or they could make the body disappear.” He walked over and held the can up.

  “What is that...cough*cough.” I choked as he sprayed the contents of the can all over my arm. After a moment, my arm was free. When I could breathe again I asked, “How’d that...cough...work?”

  Phineas tossed the can aside. “Something I remembered from my past. All of Iodinian glue solutions are dissolvable by hairspray. It’s the gas, or something... I really don’t know.”

  The strong perfume singed my nostrils. I wondered how long I was going to smell like this.

  We ran as far from the scene as possible. Back in the wood, again, Phineas took a moment to catch his breath. “Did you really work for IODINE?” I asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You might have to.” I didn’t want to say it aloud, but I was considering finding my own way home. I didn’t know if I could trust Phineas anymore. For all I knew he could have been planted here by IODINE. If he was, why would they blow his cover? Rufus seemed to have a genuine disdain for him, but agents are usually good actors.

  He seemed to understand what I meant. “When I was young and unregenerate, I was recruited by the CIA, and when I showed natural fighting skills, they trained me. It wasn’t long before I was the teacher, unrivaled in my skill. IODINE took notice quickly. They paid really well and I was just living for the next mission. I became an assassin; one of the best. I found myself in a dark place, and I started seeing the faces of each one of my victims in my dreams. I was sick in the mind, and I thought that if I stopped going on missions I would be fine. I went back to training new agents, but my conscience didn’t let up. I left IODINE, but it didn’t help. I found myself working at BDI, and over the course of my time there, I got married. Though we awaited our first child, she still had no idea about my past. Can you imagine telling the woman you love that you are a professional killer?”

  There was a moment where we sat in silence, mainly because I didn’t realize that wasn’t a rhetorical question. “No, I can’t,” I said quietly, going over all this in my mind. “Did you ever tell her?”

  He nodded. “After we both got saved, we promised to not have any secrets between us. She had some sins, but mine seemed to take the most time to get over. Eventually she came to terms with them, saying I was just doing what IODINE told me. What do you think?”

  His expression revealed a different side of him. From what I have seen, Phineas was always so certain about things. Here, he was confused and maybe even afraid. These questions must have been torturing him for years.

  “Where once sin abounded, grace abounds all the more,” I simply stated.

  He nodded. “I know, and I know I will answer for my sins, but yes, Christ has paid that debt. Because of Him, that life is behind me. I could let my guilt cripple me or I can keep moving forward, that is my choice.”

  We sat momentarily in silence before I stated, “Sorry about not getting on the bus. I was afraid of exposing my family to the dangers of IODINE. I thought they didn’t need me enough to be put in harm’s way.”

  “Arf, your family loves you, and in this time of their lives, they need you just as much as you need them, especially your mother.”

  I was irked by this comment, as I had had a dream about my mother needing me and it terrorized me. Hearing that my nightmares were founded in some fact scared me even more so.

  “What do you mean?” My mind raced. Could some of my
other dreams and visions be of past events? The young woman, the red-eyed fiend, could they all be real? What little I had learned about my personhood as Arphaxad taught me that his life must be utterly miserable.

  “I didn’t want to tell you earlier because it would distract you from what we needed to do.” Then he sat down on a log and finished, “Your mom is dying Arf, the doctors gave her at least five months last time I heard, and that was two months ago.”

  The weight of the trials were crushing. I had suffered many things in my time of remembrance, but none of them seemed to compare with the agony of my previous life. The concept of my mother dying mentally disturbed me greatly, but emotionally I felt minimal response. Like the way you feel when you learn that your cousin’s friend’s parent has cancer. This lack of emotion was almost sickening.

  “Are you ok, Arf?” Phineas asked after a while.

  “Unfortunately, yes. Why am I not more torn up about this?”

  Phineas sighed. “No memories, no emotions.”

  “I have to get home.”

  Chapter 24

  Home

  We carefully made our way out of the woods, making sure IODINE didn’t have any more agents waiting for us. Our choices were limited, as we had spent all the money we had on the bus tickets we didn’t use. We decided to hitchhike our way to Greenleaf. Though I could have made the trip in a few moments on foot, Phineas was a bit slower.

  “This is taking too long,” I complained. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I didn’t have a much faster option. “You could hop...”

  “For the last time, Arf, I am not piggybacking back to Greenleaf. I don’t want to smell like lavender strawberries.” I shook my head as I had another whiff of the strong odor from the hairspray.

  We approached a gas station where I had an idea. “Don’t you, I mean we, have any friends we can call that may have a faster mode of transportation?”

  “But I don’t have a phone. Also, it would give away our location to IODINE.”

  “Do you really think we lost IODINE? That skirmish at the bus station showed that they never lost us. If their head honcho is really as smart as they say, he already knows where we are.”

  He sighed and looked at the gas station. I could tell he was tired of walking. “Fine, I’ll ask to borrow a phone. If they refuse, you take your outer clothes off and ask in your hero suit. People don’t seem to turn you down.”

  I smiled. “Must be because I’m the Blue Blur.”

  He chuckled and walked into the station. Blue Blur, I thought, couldn’t I have thought up a cooler name than that? Speedster sounds cool, or even Blue Speedster if I kept the color scheme.

  Phineas didn’t come back immediately, so I assumed everything went well. When he did come back, he said, “They’ll be here in 30 minutes, that is if Simon doesn’t get pulled over for speeding.”

  “I never do,” I replied with a chuckle.

  ∆∆∆

  We waited by the gas station for what seemed like an eternity. I was finally going home. I knew that I had been trying to get back for a while but now it was happening. With each car that pulled into the station, I asked Phineas, “Is that them?”

  And he would deny it everything time. When the car with people who knew me drove by, I didn’t have to ask. The Jeep flew by, the girl in the passenger seat slapped the driver’s shoulder to stop, pointing at me. Without even missing a beat, the driver hit the brakes and spun the car around.

  “That’s them,” Phineas said bluntly.

  I looked down the street. There were no cop cars around, either that or the driver had lost them all.

  The vehicle came to an abrupt stop in front of us. The girl, who was probably around my age, jumped out and shouted, “Arf!” She threw herself on me and hugged me tight. It was rather awkward seeing I had no idea who this red-headed woman was.

  The brown-haired young man who was driving also jumped out of the car and walked around the front, saying, “Dude where in the world have you been and why were you in Korea?”

  He also embraced me and I was left overwhelmed. Neither of these people looked anything like me. I looked at Phineas.

  “Guys take it easy; he doesn’t remember anything about anyone. Not even you Simon,” he stated coldly.

  Their smiles disappeared as they looked at me with disappointment and sorrow.

  Simon asked, “You don’t even remember New Year’s Eve 2030?”

  “I’m afraid not. Simon, right?”

  He looked like he had meant it as a joke, but my comment silenced him.

  The young woman asked, “Do you remember me at all?”

  I frowned and shook my head.

  The look on their faces was startling, like the look someone would have if they had watched their friend die, which is a fitting comparison.

  The one named Simon said, “Well, let’s get him home. I’ll drive.”

  We heard a door slam as Phineas buckled the driver’s seat belt. “No, you aren’t Simon. I’ve had too many near death experiences for one month.”

  I laughed, which encouraged minor smiles in the two. We got in the car with me and Simon in the back.

  “So, what happened the night you left? You had something to tell me about IODINE and your secret identity?” Simon asked.

  I froze, did he know that I was a speedster? Phineas answered to my concerns, “It ok Arf, they both know. Your entire family does.”

  “Oh, isn’t that superhero 101 – don’t tell anyone?”

  “Not for you,” the girl, whose name I learned was Abigail, replied. “Aside from some bending of physics, you’re unlike any other hero.”

  Simon chimed in, “Yeah, you never stop pointing to Christ, except for that episode with Flamethrower.”

  “Who?” I asked. As the word left my mouth, pain erupted in my head.

  I tried to stay in the real world, but the more I fought, the worse the pain was. I was only stuck in the mind prison for a brief moment before I was back in the Jeep again. It wasn’t the same though. The guy, Simon I think, was driving. I was shouting, “Go!”

  I winced as I looked to my legs, which were burnt terribly. My suit legs were gone, melted off by the looks of them. “Who was that?” Simon asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said as my mind was yanked back into reality, where the memories were still trapped and unavailable.

  Abigail looked at me, concern painted on her face. “You’re not ok, are you?”

  I shook my head. “Just one of the many gifts from Mindsweeper.”

  Simon questioned, “Who’s Mindsweeper?” Remembering how much he didn’t know he reworded his question. “Wait, back up. What happened Arf? When you went missing, I tracked your phone to the BDI warehouse, but you were gone.”

  I explained what I could remember about Mindsweeper, everything about IODINE, Korea, and our break out. Abigail appeared to stop listening shortly after I described Mindsweeper’s tech. Simon listened intently while Abigail was lost in thought.

  “Dude, that’s messed up,” Simon said after my story. “We had heard about the Senator’s assassination; that’s what sent us to war, but we couldn’t imagine that’s what happened.”

  “Wait, war?”

  Simon sighed. “Yes, war. Many are afraid it’ll escalate to a world war, but it’s too early to tell. Luckily the government hasn’t issued a draft or anything. Otherwise all of our plans are challenged.” He briefly glanced at Abigail as he said that.

  I nodded and tried to pull the story back down to earth. “So, you and Abigail. Are you two...” Simon raised an eyebrow. “Siblings?” I managed. It was a bad guess.

  Simon shook his head as if I should’ve known that was wrong. Abigail spoke from the passenger seat. “I think I know how Mindsweeper got his technology.”

  Our attention was directed to her. “When we purged BDI from my father’s influence, I personally saw to the discontinuation of the Memory program he had started.”

  She closed her eyes at the thought
of bitter memories. Simon placed his hand on her shoulder. “It’s ok, I’ll explain your dad to him later.”

  She nodded and opened her eyes. “Someone may have either taken or sold the research. If this Mindsweeper does have the tech, he may have developed it further, which is why you can’t remember anything. However, if I dig into some old files, I think there’s a way to trace Mindsweeper’s actions by the tech he’s using.”

  I would have replied, but Phineas pulled in front of a house. “We’re here.”

  Simon looked around. “No, we’re not, this is my old home. Arf’s is down there. Don’t you see all the kids coming at us?”

  I looked out the front window and saw six kids from maybe five to sixteen running at us screaming, “Arf!”

  The two boys and four girls practically pounced on the car. A boy with a scar on his eyebrow opened my door and said, “Come’on get out!”

  I slowly stepped out to be almost knocked over by the swarm. I was flooded with a million questions, none of which I heard.

  The other boy after hugging me said, “He’s wearing his suit. Must make him feel better about himself.”

  I was rather offended by the comment. “Hey! I don’t know who you are, but that was rude and unnecessary.”

  The scarred boy said bluntly, “Yep, thats’a Arf.”

  Simon had gotten out of the car and said, “James, John, this is serious. He doesn’t know who you are.”

  The oldest girl tilted her head. “You mean, he has amnesia?”

  He nodded and we walked to the house. James, or John wiped a tear, whether real or not, from his cheek and said to the other, “And I thought we were unforgettable.”

  We walked through the door to see two other young people in the hallway. A young man and woman, who were definitely siblings.

  “Hello, I’m sure you know me, but who are you?” I said sheepishly. The woman gave me a hug as she fought back tears. The man did the same.

  “We are your brothers and sisters.” Then pointing at each one from the oldest to youngest, he said, “She’s Ruth,” gesturing to his sister beside him. “I’m Paul, and then there’s James, John, Leah, Mary, Hope, and Grace,” he said as he pointed to each child.