by M. N. Arzu
* * *
“I don’t even know what it is that I dislike about him,” Christopher said as he paced in Andrew’s apartment. He’d never seen Chris so mad about anything ever before. “Hell, I can’t even say I don’t like how he looks because he looks exactly like Matt, just older, and unpleasant…”
“Slow down, my friend. This guy just came out of nowhere to reclaim one of your brothers. It’s perfectly normal to feel jealous—”
“Jealous? I’m not jealous, I’m—I’m—”
“Jealous. Okay, maybe not jealous-jealous, but suddenly you have to share him with someone else, someone who’s not one of you as a Brooks. Someone who can potentially take him away from you.”
That had been the wrong thing to say. Chris looked as if Andrew had punched him in the gut, and then kicked him on the floor.
“You don’t understand,” Chris said, looking rather lost in the middle of Andrew’s living room. “I was right there with Julian when he turned to face us. Something primal inside of me recoiled. Completely and absolutely recoiled. As if I was expecting him to have a gun and shoot us right there in the middle of Central Park.”
“Okay, the guy has one of those faces—”
“No, it’s the eyes. I mean, you look at Matt and you think mischief. You look into Adrian’s eyes and there’s nothing but darkness. And now Matt might go with him while I have all these conflicting emotions. It’s as if I’m losing my own brother while he’s right in front of me.”
Air rushed out of Chris’s lungs, as if he were exhausted from thinking about Matt’s newfound relative. This is wrong, this is so wrong, Andrew thought, guiding Chris to sit on a stool in the kitchen, while he started getting out the ingredients for his green shake.
“What does Julian think?”
“I don’t know. He’s trying to be stoic and responsible and, you know—a good guardian or something. He says—he says Matt and Adrian need time to get to know each other and build a relationship. But I don’t know how he feels about the whole thing, because Julian won’t let something like his emotions get in the way of Matt’s happiness.”
The way Christopher said happiness sounded cold and slimy.
“I swear this guy timed it just right to land when we were at our lowest point.”
“Now you sound paranoid,” Andrew pointed out as he poured all the ingredients into the blender.
“Matt’s not safe, Andrew. I can’t shake the feeling that he’s not safe. And there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.”
* * *
There was wisdom in Gwen’s words, or so Julian hoped when he stopped by Saavan Academy to have some time alone with Scott. His son waited for Julian outside the principal’s office, his backpack over one shoulder, his face anxious.
“What’s going on? Why are you here?” Scott whispered as Julian was signing some paperwork. “Did something happen with Drake?”
As the only member of his family who couldn’t be telepathically warned of an impending escape, it was a reasonable question. “Nothing’s wrong. He checked in with me an hour ago. I was settling some things with the law firm near here, and since it’s almost time for lunch, I’m taking you out.”
Anxiety gave way to suspicion. “Why?”
Placing a hand on his shoulder, Julian redirected Scott out of the principal’s office and into the deserted halls. “’Cause I feel like taking you out. Unless you don’t want to come?”
“What about Alex and Matt?”
“They’ll get regular cafeteria food. And for what they charge, it better be as good as taking you out.”
They exited the Academy and reached the car in silence. The sound of the car doors closing felt too loud, and the interior too silent.
“I’ve been thinking about—”
“How come it’s just me—”
They spoke at the same time. Julian smiled as he thought this through. Honesty was always going to be the best way to talk to Scott. “Your principal has brought to my attention that you might be struggling with the aftermath of what happened with Wallace and Jason—not that she knows that, but she said some things that made me think we haven’t really discussed it. And with your mind closed, I’m a little lost on how to help you.”
Scott shrugged. “I’m fine.”
Fine scratched Julian’s ears like nails on a chalkboard. He’d been racking his brain trying to find a hobby where staring you down was a thing, until it had finally occurred to him that Scott might not need a hobby right now. Maybe all he needed was focusing on a subject he had a deep interest in.
“I’ve been talking with the Council members about your telepathy,” Julian started. “Aurel and Mireya have some ideas that might help you get better.” A flicker of interest, but Scott was not going to settle for wishful thinking. “There’s a good chance The City might be able to help once you turn twenty-eight and go—”
“I will never go to The City,” Scott said with such determination, Julian might as well have told him he was giving him back to the Pentagon. In the stunned moment that followed, Julian couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of déjà vu.
“You look just like your father when he was making a point.”
There was no higher praise in Scott’s world than his parents, Julian remembered as his stoic son slightly blushed and turned to look at the window. “You hardly knew them,” Scott whispered, as Julian started the car. So maybe telepathy was a failed subject, but talking about family was more than a worthy theme. He just had to pick the right words.
“Drake was their close friend, true, but they were…notorious in The City. I heard their ideas several times, and they influenced many to see beyond The City’s walls—including me. In a strange way, Scott, they’re the reason why you and I are here right now.”
“I miss them…” Scott whispered, the first time he’d ever admitted that to Julian. “I miss their voices in my mind.” He kept looking out the window, blinking fast to stop any tears from falling.
Julian placed a hand on his shoulder, and Scott shrugged it off. “It was a long time ago,” his son said, the hard mask back on his face. But now that Julian had seen that door opening, he was not going to let it go.
“I miss my parents’ voices, too,” Julian said, as New York traffic met them. “There’s a…familiarity, I guess, a quality only your parents’ voices have. My mother used to tell bad jokes all the time. And my father—my father believed I would turn around and come back to The City as soon as I reached the surface. Almost everyone believed we were idealists who wouldn’t survive one day in the savage world.”
It felt strange to talk about this, about The City and his parents and the world he no longer belonged to. He hadn’t thought about those times in a long while, not with any detail, and certainly not with anyone younger than a century or so.
“But you never returned, right?” Scott said, frowning. “They never knew what happened to you.”
“That’s not entirely true. They still live in The City, of course. And once the Council was formed, news of us must have reached them.”
“So you spoke to them.”
“The only contact between the surface and The City is for emergencies, and when someone is coming or going back. Nothing else. And Lavine is the only one who does the actual talk, since she lives in Hawaii. She’s the only one close enough. The rest of us, the rest of the surface merfolk, we don’t talk to The City. Not for personal reasons, not even to say you made it. It was the condition The City imposed on us when we became organized. We certainly knew messages were not going to be feasible when we were leaving centuries ago.”
“That’s stupid. You can be in Hawaii in hours and talk to anyone down there. I mean, wouldn’t you talk to your parents if you could? And—Chris’s parents are there, too!” Scott said with rounded eyes, understanding how segregation truly divided families.
“There’s a lot of stupid in The City, kiddo. That’s why we left, and that’s why we stay away. I think they thought
that withholding communications would deter us from leaving, or at the very least, would make finding The City harder.”
“No wonder my parents left,” Scott said with that old smugness in his voice that had been missing for a few weeks now. “My family was smart.”
“Hmm,” Julian said as he maneuvered around the congested streets of New York City. “Maybe you’ll be interested in hearing what their parents are like…?”
He could see it as clearly as if Scott had still been mentally linked to him. The world stopped for his youngest son and the whole universe realigned. “I have grandparents?”
And for the first time since he’d met Scott, he saw the spark of absolute wonder in his young eyes.
14
Storytelling
In the last week, Kate had learned that she didn’t like to be the subject of an investigation. Or rather, she didn’t like the idea that Patrick would expose her as some lucky journalist who was conspiring with the government to keep a merman prisoner.
She needed a plan to tell the truth, on her terms, and on her time; preferably one where no Brookses ended up in a secret government lab.
“So, what you’re saying,” her editor said as Kate finished explaining her research on Patrick O’Connor so far, “is that he might sell the story and implicate us at any time.”
“I think he will sell the story once he has a more solid foundation, but he will take us down as co-conspirators. And frankly, I don’t think he’ll give a damn that we’re trying to break the story without irresponsibly breaking the Brookses to the entire world.”
Ken thought about it for a moment, his mind sifting through possibilities. “We need to change the narrative,” he said after a long pause. “We know why the Brookses are involved. Patrick is still at the stage where he thinks Christopher Brooks encountered Ray, not that they’re one and the same.”
“You want to expose Christopher Brooks?” she asked, confused. Ken was more than happy to work with the merfolk’s timeline—whatever that might be—because he was guaranteed to have the exclusive every step of the way without ripping anyone apart or throwing children under the bus. At some point, the Brookses would either come into the light, or quietly disappear, and her editor was prepared for either outcome.
Unless someone was threatening to outscoop him.
“Not Christopher, but Ray. There are enough conspiracy sites and everyday people who believe he was taken to a military facility once he woke up. We know he survived, of course, and that does give us an advantage. The real question here is how we change the narrative to the point that Patrick’s leads don’t lead to us. How do we tell people Ray didn’t die without showing where Ray really is?”
In her mind, she saw an alternative chain of events, one that fit almost perfectly with the facts that Patrick was uncovering by following her steps. The same line she would have believed if a certain watch had not led her to a certain rich man.
“If we want to start telling the truth, Chief, then we’ll need more people on board to pull it off.”
* * *
There was a time to be on the offensive, a time to be on the defensive, and a time to look for common ground. In her business, the reporter who got to the source first won, and she was willing to bet two months’ salary that Patrick O’Connor was going to interview Julian Brooks sooner rather than later. So here she was, in an unscheduled Monday meeting, arguing with one of the most influential men in the United States about reshaping the tale he’d helped her built to begin with. And he wasn’t happy.
“All Patrick O’Connor has is conjectures,” Julian Brooks said, raising one skeptical eyebrow. “He has even less of what you did when you first coerced me into dinner in Maine.”
And we both know how that ended, Kate could practically hear in Julian’s unspoken words. This was the first time she had ever come to the man’s office, and right here, dressed in his expensive suit and sitting behind his expensive desk, the guy looked intimidating. And she wasn’t even threatening to expose his family to the press. She was here as an ally.
“Patrick O’Connor has broken some of the biggest stories in the world. You shouldn’t take him lightly. He’s looking into what happened to Ray, and conjectures or no, he’s still a problem.”
“So what do you have in mind, Ms. Banes? Why are you telling me this personally?”
Her editor had warned her about coming. Yes, Veritas Co. had enough to make a case about the Brookses being merfolk, and people would certainly believe it. Unfortunately, the government already did, so there was little pressure Veritas could use to lead Julian where they wanted. Worse, if they exposed him to get the story first, not only would Julian retaliate with excessive legal force, he would disappear, and Ken would lose their favor. No, her editor was eager to make acquaintances with Major White and Julian Brooks, and work with them in slowly telling the truth.
But that was before Patrick showed up, she reminded herself.
“We’re going to publish that Ray is alive—not that he’s your son, no, but all the pieces out there are falling into place and pointing to that story. Patrick is certainly close to it.”
“If you release that Ray is alive, you’ll be contradicting the United Nations, ORCAS, and the Pentagon.” Julian’s steely blue eyes were not happy with her, but that was okay; she still had one ace under her sleeve.
“Not if we all agree with the story, the same way we all agreed to say Ray died. Think about it: it would shut down many conspiracy theories; it would give Ray a happy ending, which the people will eat like candy; and—”
“It would throw off Patrick’s investigation of you?” Julian asked with a raised eyebrow.
“It would throw off Patrick’s theories that will eventually lead to you. He already knows Brooks Inc. is involved. Do you really want him paying close attention to you and your family?”
“Saying Ray’s alive will be a logistics nightmare, and we won’t gain anything from it,” Julian said, not giving her an inch.
“Look, sooner or later, another one of you is going to be in the news. Maybe in the hands of another merfolk hunter, maybe due to an overzealous SWIMMER, or maybe in the nets of a foreign government. And when that happens, you’ll need people to already love you, so the public outcry is on your side. A dead body is not going to give you that.”
“Ray’s death has served us well, especially since no one is looking for him or any connection between him and my son.”
“Not yet. But I know where Patrick’s going because I’ve been there. I know he’ll end up at your doorstep in the next few days. On the other hand, Veritas Co. has always respected your wishes. We want your voice in this story. We know we’re going against a thick wall if we do this alone—and we will if there’s no other way—but you’ve always played your hand right. I still stand by what I told you back in Maine: we want to tell your family’s story in the best way possible.” His eyes were looking at her, but his mind was seeing possibilities that she had no hope of understanding. “It’s up to you, Mr. Brooks, but whatever you decide, we still want you to know that we’re not your enemy.”
Right before the silence stretched into awkward territory, Julian spoke, “When are you planning to run the story?”
Depending on what Legal says about how much trouble Major White can get us in…
“Soon,” she said with a straight face, knowing it would be a miracle if they could make it by the end of the week.
“I appreciate you giving us a heads-up. If I have anything to add to your story, I’ll be sure to contact your editor. Good morning, Ms. Banes.”
* * *
Not far from Brooks Inc., Patrick O’Connor had many questions. He didn’t have a Wall of Truth, exactly. He preferred to work in the cloud, connecting several documents, internet articles, and pictures into a tangled monster that only made sense in his mind. He was organized in a way that challenged most people’s logic, which was fine by him. The more cryptic his notes, the more likely he was getting clo
se to breaking the story.
On his monitor, he had six different files open, along with a couple of images attached to each one. Soft eighties music played in the background and he absently hummed to the tunes while he typed on his master document. At this stage, when he’d distilled most of his information to its core, he would start linking unrelated people and stories to see if any of them could remotely match. Looking for nonlinear relationships always helped his brain to get organized, and every once in a while, his deductions would guide him to brilliant breakthroughs.
In the beginning, when he’d been tracing Kate Banes’s footsteps, he’d learned two things: Kate had found the truth—and then had decided to shut up about it. But more importantly, she’d found out the truth from Julian Brooks. So Patrick had broadened his circle of suspects, and for a while he’d eagerly pursued the famous billionaire.
The problem with following Julian was that the man was used to people following him, and had a legal team in place to protect his interests. Public records were squeaky clean, and looking into his past was so darn transparent that it had to be planted. No, the way to investigate Julian Brooks was by the sidelines, but even with his expertise, Patrick was coming up blank.
It wasn’t a question of what Julian was hiding. It was a matter of which of his many secrets Patrick actually wanted.
But to want and to get are two different things, Pat…
After three months of chasing the elusive man, he’d turned his sights towards the other players in Ray’s captivity, namely some 200 scientists the UN had hired along with the Pentagon. Almost all of them had corroborated that they had seen the merman from the observation deck, or had been consulting on his deteriorating health, but only two doctors had been allowed to be with Ray at all times: one Dr. Safi Higgs, a Kenyan, and Dr. Gwen Gaston, a Maine resident. And of the two of them, only Ms. Gaston had been making the public rounds.
