by Patrick Wong
“Dad? It’s OK. We’re safe and warm and fine.”
“Good.”
Nicole could tell he was trying hard to be strong for her.
“So, I’ve been tipped off that the feds are tailing me, and I can tell they’re close, so I’ll need to go quiet for a little while.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine. It’s just for a day or two. Are you still with your friends?”
“Yes. And I’m with Professor Barnard.”
Silence greeted her from the other end. “Who is he?”
“He knows. About Balancers.”
“You trust him?”
“Yes, he can be trusted.”
“OK. But any sign of trouble, you call 911. I have a feeling you’d be safer in the hands of the Florida state police rather than the FBI. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Take care.”
As she hung up the phone, Nicole took a deep breath. Barnard glanced up from his paperwork and held her serious gaze for a moment, then returned to his work.
“Make sure you get your food order in, Nicole,” Barnard said without looking back up. “Everybody else has already made their choices.”
Nicole picked up the menu and started to scan the list for something she might like. Amy bounced over and put her arm around Nicole to get another look. “Oh, they have pizza? Nicole, add the pizza, too. And that.” Amy grinned and pointed to the picture of a bowl of loaded nachos.
“Professor? Can we order anything?” Nicole asked.
“Anything. Order everything on the menu. Just have fun.” He pointed to a handful of coins stacked on nearby table. “You can thank some 15th-century Spaniards and a pawn shop for this food.”
She resumed skimming the menu, and before long had jumped to the back page with all the desserts. “Volcano Ice Cream Sundae. Feeds 4?” Nicole looked over at Amy.
“Absolutely we need that! Get two!”
“Volcanoooooo!” shouted Drake.
“Volcanoooooooooo!” Ben echoed.
“Hush! For God’s sake, you want to get us killed? Be quiet!” Barnard scolded.
The group dutifully fell silent, but still managed to sneak in one last whispered “Volcanoooooo.”
Money and Power
Out of the gap in the curtains, Ben could see that night was drawing out. He’d taken a nap a little earlier, but was finding it almost impossible to sleep now. The situation was being made worse by Amy’s snoring, to which everyone else seemed immune. To him, her snores were like sandpaper being rubbed in his ears.
Nicole had fallen asleep on one couch, and Amy and Drake were curled up next to each other on the other one. Scraped-clean plates and half-finished drink cans were scattered throughout the room — evidence of an evening spent recuperating from what the group had termed “the longest day.”
Ben had moved to occupy one of the easy chairs next to the window. Barnard had been dozing on the floor next to the couch, his portfolio spread open on the small coffee table. Ben was taking the opportunity to look through the eminent professor’s research. It was humbling to see it in front of him — objects and original documents to touch and savor rather than mere scans and printouts. His stare had stopped on picture panels he hadn’t seen before. It was a triptych, a wooden object painted with gold, silver and purple. It depicted three figures, each sharing similar facial features and a particular cryptic expression. They reminded Ben of the Birth of Venus — angelic, androgynous, but concealing something. A secret power or a sinister heart, perhaps? Ben estimated this triptych was a couple hundred years old, as it had the golden embossing that he had once seen in pictures of artwork in the Vatican. Barnard had scribbled illegible notes on a separate sketch of the object, but the person who was the Balancer was set in the middle, arms outstretched to gesture toward those on either side.
Barnard had translated the Latin script underneath the figures. The character on the left had its fists clenched and held to its chest. The person’s expression was inscrutable and looked a little like it was in pain, but there was also an arrogance to it. The inscription read “They who Take.” The middle character, with palms lifted, had its eyes closed shut, as if in deep thought, with the weight of decision reflected on its face. It reminded Ben of the saying about justice being blind. Underneath ran “They who Balance.” The figure on the right had its eyes open with compassion and its hands outstretched, fingers splayed wide. This was “They who Give.”
Ben paused in thought for a moment. He had assumed that in the otherworldliness of what Nicole could do, nature would have one element — something that could balance it all — and that the giving or taking would be to or from the humans surrounding the Balancer. This triptych set things in a different light, and Ben drew an awed breath as he began to consider the implications of it all. It would mean nothing less than that Nicole wasn’t alone in her powers. A Triple Deity was a common pattern in ancient religious art and mythology.
“Staggering, huh?” Barnard had been watching Ben pore over his research for the past few minutes. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and gave a little cat stretch.
“Who else knows about this?” Ben kept his voice to a whisper, though he suspected only a freight train hammering through the room could rouse his friends.
“Well, originally, it was just me and DuBois.”
“But he didn’t believe you.”
“He wanted to discredit me. That’s a little different. See, when you know a thing or discover a thing —any area where knowledge is power — you’re going to contend with people wanting what you have. In academia, for instance, it’s important to be the first to discover something. That’s how I met DuBois. He offered to pool resources, and academia is a cutthroat place, so I agreed. He’s a charismatic guy. Talked a good game. So I thought, why not? But he’s a talker, not a doer. He needed my research expertise, and for a while, I was happy to go along with it. I had a wife and kids back then, and I didn’t have the patience for all that faculty palm-pressing and sucking up to funding boards. DuBois did all that. Then we started getting approached by some government people. They wanted to pay us to keep our research secret. Trouble is, there’s one thing that you learn in academia, and it’s this: Publish or die. So I declined. First it was out of vanity. I didn’t do all this research to shove it under the carpet. You understand?”
Ben nodded. “DuBois had other ideas?”
“Not initially. Or that’s not what he told me. Think about it: He’d poured thousands of dollars into my research. He didn’t do that just to shove it all in a file cabinet to gather dust. Over time, as I looked deeper into the history of Balancers, our opinions about what to do with these findings became more divergent. For me, publishing was less about vanity and more about wanting the world to know about Balancers. This,” he indicated to the wealth of documents outstretched in front of them. “This is living history. Every man, woman and child on the street deserves to know about Balancers.”
“But DuBois wanted the money, I guess?”
“Money and power. So he started encouraging me to do as the government asked and keep quiet. It got so bad that, at one point, he threatened to halt my funding if I didn’t stop. I refused.” Barnard sighed. “Then he did stop my funding. Oh, he made up some gibberish about it all and stood by his assertions, but the thing itself isn’t easy to discredit. Everyone wants to know about the Fountain of Youth, but no one’s ready for when someone else stands up and says, ‘Hey, it’s here!’”
“So he discredited you and buried the research?”
“That’s what he wanted me to think. But I think you know what really happened.”
“He took it on for the government to develop.”
Barnard nodded. “At some stage, the government changed tack. Now people in the government believed in Balancers, and just the knowledge of Balancers was a national defense secret. That’s when they started to fear me, because they knew I wouldn’t play ball. One night I came back ear
ly from teaching at the university, and the feds were in my home.”
Ben let out an inadvertent gasp.
“You should’ve seen it,” murmured the professor as a tear sprang to his eye. “The worst of it was that they had no respect. It was all snatched up. Everything I had worked for — rummaged through and taken away. Of course, it was my life’s work, so I had to go and stand up for it. Hell, I gave them an earful of what I thought of it all. But they had guns. Then it occurred to me: They could take away my paper, but they couldn’t take away the knowledge in my head. Thing was, I got the sense that they would go for that, too. So I snuck out of there and just ran.” He sat back in his chair then, pondering the event like he was recalling the scenes of an old film. “He was there, DuBois, in the shadows. I swore he met my eyes for a moment, and then he looked away. I think our years of partnership gave me that one moment of charity from him. DuBois probably knew they would kill me for what’s in my head, and he was willing to look away once so I could get away. I’ve been in hiding ever since.”
Ben let this sink in. “You really saw the dark face of the government.”
“In my book, it’s the only face it has. The rest is smoke and mirrors. So, that girl,” he indicated toward a sleeping Nicole. “She’s truly special. Throughout history, she would have been worshipped like a god. We must protect her at all costs. Not just from them physically, but the tale of the Balancer speaks of her needing her friends. Whatever happens, you must learn from this, because these two other deities,” he pointed down at They who Take and They who Give, “may have already been found. God help us all if the government captures either one of them.”
Ben let this new, dark information seep in. It would be a few more hours before he would be able to sleep.
You Get Away From Her
Nicole shuddered awake. Unsure whether it was a noise from her dream or whether it had come from outside the treehouse, she waited a few more moments, frozen in her spot. The silence of the dark before the dawn greeted her. Satisfied, she plumped up the pillows and eased herself up to sitting.
Amy was dozing nearby, next to Drake. Looking over by the easy chairs, Nicole could see that sleep had also claimed the professor and Ben.
Still alert, Nicole listened for a further noise. Everyone else in this room was calm and resting, but something was curling Nicole’s spine. It was the same instinct that had saved her and Amy in the forest fire, and for the life of her, she couldn’t shake it now.
Then she heard another kind of noise, no less frightening. It was soft at first, hardly discernible. But she could pick out what sounded like footsteps on wooden planks and the creaking of ropes from the suspended bridges leading up to their room. It was too early or late for visitors, and the nearest treehouses were a considerable distance away. Adrenalin surged through her body again, and she gripped the animal-patterned quilt.
There were muffled footsteps, and then she heard the screeching of tires. It was a car pulling into the resort parking lot. She nudged Amy and leaned forward to awaken Drake.
“Guys?” she said, clearing her throat, and then uttering the word again, a little louder. “Guys, I think there’s someone …”
But she didn’t get to finish her sentence.
A nearby window shattered as a small canister flew into the room. Frozen to the couch, Nicole saw it roll under the desk. She sprang forward to try to kick it away. That was when the valve popped and it released a broad stream of gas into the room.
It felt like claws digging into her eyes and throat.
“Get out! Everyone get out!” Drake was screaming now, and Nicole wasn’t sure whether it was the gas or the shock that was dizzying her thinking, but things were spinning in slow motion, and the furniture in the room was all a blur. Nothing would stay in focus.
Three figures clad in black body armor with helmet-mounted flashlights had entered, wearing gas masks and carrying automatic weapons.
“Nicole!” It was Amy’s voice, clear and pleading.
The smoke was fogging everyone’s vision and it stung Nicole’s eyes, but she could just make out the shape of Amy. She ran toward her.
But then she heard another noise. It was like a low, metallic whisper. In the slowed-down, surreal seconds that followed, Nicole found herself wondering why films made guns sound so different from how they did in reality. The feds wanted to sneak in under cover of the night, and they were using silencers to do so.
It was a warning shot. She felt the pain cripple up her leg, and she sank to her knees. It was the same leg that Agent Carter had shot just a few days earlier. Nicole knew it was the same people as before. They were causing her pain to get her disoriented so she couldn’t think straight. So she couldn’t Balance.
“No!” she screamed. She turned back around as the pain coursed through her leg. She lifted her gaze to her assailants, and she saw then that she was being pointed at. Identified. They had a photograph taped to their sleeves and were comparing the photograph against her. She was their prize.
Before she knew it, another of the men had grabbed her arm and was punching a needle into it. But before the masked man could push down the plunger on the needle, he fell hard backward into the desk behind him, with such force that the desk fell over. It was Drake, and his face was curled up in fierce anger.
“You son of a bitch, you get away from her!” he roared.
Nicole staggered to her feet and tried to hide behind Drake. She could tell fury was pumping his veins, and he wouldn’t stop.
He turned to her. “Grab Amy and Ben. I’m going to push them away from the doorway so you can escape.”
Nicole nodded, and, with a final burst, Drake managed to push Nicole’s second assailant to the floor. He then proceeded to rip off their gas masks.
“See how you like it now!” he cried. The determined soldier underneath punched at Drake’s face, but there was no stopping Drake, who was struggling now for the attacker’s gun.
“Amy!” Nicole cried out, trying to locate her friend in the chaos. Amy was screaming at the men to stop hurting Drake.
Nicole started to make her way toward the direction of Amy’s voice, but her leg was throbbing with pain.
What happened next changed everything.
She heard another shot and heard Drake cry out. He went limp and collapsed to the floor, as if someone had flicked the “off” switch in his body. Drake was down. He had been shot. Three more shots followed in quick succession. Ben let out a small cry, and then he, too, slumped forward.
These were no warning shots, Nicole thought. They were executing her friends one by one.
“No!” Nicole screamed, trying to drag herself away. She watched as Amy crawled to her boyfriend’s side, and Nicole saw from the blood spreading out on her back that a shot had hit Amy in the chest. She screamed out again, but the room was turning dim, and she could feel several arms grabbing her and pulling her toward the door. Away from her friends.
Barnard and Ben were both slumped over the coffee table, so they couldn’t help. Summoning force from somewhere deep inside, Nicole leapt forward and pushed one of her assailants down. She was going to kill him by Balancing to help her friends.
But whatever was in the canister had already weakened her body, and the drugs in the syringe were making their way into her system. She had trouble focusing, and she couldn’t see the man’s face. She knew nothing about him. A cold knife of fear pierced her heart when she realized she couldn’t do it. She had moments left. A terrible realization overwhelmed her — her mind was failing, and she was losing the strength to fight.
“Nix!” Amy cried. “The animals!”
As Nicole pushed back her assailant again, the room went black. For a moment, Nicole thought they must have fired at her, too, and that this was the end. But then she came to. Although she could still breathe, she couldn’t see — they had put a bag over her head and were hauling her out.
Aware there were only precious moments in which she could respond, Ni
cole concentrated on the only things she had in her mind: her friends and the animals they had met earlier. She might not be able to help herself or hurt the men, but she could try to save her friends.
She imagined the giraffes, zebras and antelopes in the savanna. She took a moment of sadness for these innocent creatures, knowing that her love for her friends would need to win out.
Recalling how she’d held her hand on one zebra’s head, she imagined doing so again, but this time, with sadness, compassion and love. Her hand began to draw life from the creature.
As though she were conducting the life force from the animals in the park, she used her last strength to raise her hands. There it was — the life energy, suspended like a magical rain cloud full of vitality. Then she pictured Amy, Ben and Drake. She felt her love and compassion for each of them in turn.
With her last moments of consciousness, she let the life force rain down on the room as she imagined a torrential storm of life pouring from the ceiling and drenching her friends with hope.
Then everything went black.
She’s the Best Weapon We Had
Amy opened her eyes. For a moment, the dazed time between sleep and waking suspended her in an unaware bubble. Then she remembered what had happened, and she let out a little cry at the sight in front of her.
It was a waking nightmare. There was blood all over her clothes, the floor, the carpets, and across the animal quilt. Now she remembered the gas and the terrifying assailants wearing masks. She recalled getting shot and the excruciating pain of the impact of the bullet. When she reached down to the sharp object jutting into her chest, her hand produced a crumpled piece of metal shrapnel.
“Oh God.”
It was morning now, and the gas had kept them unconscious for what must have been an hour or so. Now she pieced the events together. The intruders had shot her, and Nicole had healed her.
Nicole!
She scanned the room. Nicole was nowhere.
“Nicole? No …”
The truth was all around: The feds had finally caught up with them and succeeded in kidnapping Nicole.
