The Sovereign Era (Book 1): Brave Men Run

by Matthew Wayne Selznick

  We looked at him.

  “You don’t need to be concerned about your friend Byron. He’s with us.”

  I leaned forward in my seat. “What? Where? Is he all right?”

  I finally caught the faintest hint of cigar smoke on Croy’s clothes. He wasn’t the smoker… but one of his Sovereign friends must have been.

  “He’s fully recovered. He’s at the Institute.”

  “What’s he doing there?” I laughed. “Man. His father must be pissed!”

  “His parents don’t know,” Croy said. “We will notify them soon.”

  “When’s he coming back?” my mother said.

  Croy turned his head toward me, slightly. “He’s not. He’s with his people.”

  His people. Right.

  After all, Byron was a real Sovereign. Not like me.

  “What about his parents? I mean, he’s probably better off, don’t get me wrong, but you can’t just keep him, right?” I looked at my mother. “He’s, like, a minor still, right?”

  Croy said, “He’s Sovereign. And he wants to be with other Sovereign.”

  I looked at him, but his face was a stony mask.

  My mother cleared her throat. “There’s… there’s another thing, Nathan.”

  I looked at her. She wasn’t obviously upset, but there was definitely something she was trying to hold in.

  I frowned; sighed. “Okay. What else?”

  “About your father, Andrew Charters,” Croy said. “You might want to know the rest of his story.”

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Fifty Eight

  I blinked.

  “How..?”

  “As I said, we’ve known about Project: Rancher for some time. We discovered your father about six years ago.”

  Donner and the Sovereign people were active that long ago? I wanted to ask about that, but I didn’t want to interrupt Croy’s story. I just nodded.

  “You might not know that your father has had a great deal of difficulty adjusting to his abilities,” he said.

  I nodded. “The world’s too slow,” I said. “And he remembers what it’s like to be human.”

  “That’s exactly correct.” Croy's eyes bored into me. “When we found him, his humanity was almost completely submerged. He was like an animal.”

  Next to me, my mother’s breathing became shallow and quick.

  “We brought him to one of our sanctuaries, and tried to help,” Croy said. “That’s when we discovered the truth of his nature, and made the connection with Project: Rancher. Once we knew he had been given the Augmentation Regimen, we also knew he carried the fail-safes.”

  “Fail-safes..?”

  “The same technique that changed his genetic structure,” Croy said, “could be used to kill him.”

  I visualized Brenhurst’s agent, dissolving in a cloud of gore. He was taken apart from the inside… like his own cells grew teeth.

  “You… you guys fixed him.”

  “We have an individual who is able to neutralize the fail-safe factor.”

  “So, is that where my dad is now? Is he at the Institute with Byron?”

  Croy’s head moved. “No. Mr. Charters prefers to live in the wilderness. He’s out there, now.”

  I looked at my mother. Her eyes were wet and her face was red. She stared at a spot on the table top.

  I reached under the table. She clutched my hand.

  I said to Croy, “I thought he ran away. Again.”

  “I believe your father knew the immediate danger to you and your mother and Ms. Porter was passed. Since he’s legally dead, it would have been challenging to explain himself to the authorities when they arrived.”

  My father hadn’t seemed capable of that kind of planning. He acted like a crazy person.

  I remembered what Brenhurst had said to him. “You’re still in there.”

  “Comes and goes,” my father had replied.

  A little laugh broke from my lips. I felt like I would float off the chair.

  “I really thought he’d cut out. I thought he’d just run away again.”

  Croy’s iron gaze finally broke away from me. He reached into his lapel pocket. “It’s interesting that you should say that,” he said. He handed me a folded piece of paper.

  I let go of my mother’s hand and took it from him. As soon as I did, I knew it was from my father. It was smudged with dirt from his hands. It smelled like soil and sweat and blood.

  I breathed it in.

  I unfolded it.

  His writing was a jagged, hasty scrawl, slanted and uneven, but I could read it.

  I didn’t even care that Croy was sitting right there. I started to cry, shallow and quiet. I don’t think I could have stopped if I’d wanted to.

  My mother’s hand came away from mine and she touched me on the shoulder. “What does it say, Nathan?”

  I handed the paper to her and wiped my eyes. I sniffed loudly. The tears still came. I could barely see.

  My mother read his words out loud.

  “Dear Nate.”

  I was close to blubbering. Everything that happened in the last few weeks… everything that had happened, ever… it all washed out of me. I felt my anger and my sadness and my frustration and confusion and everything that had made me who I was for the first sixteen years of my life rushing out, pouring out, leaving me empty.

  Leaving me ready for whatever I decided to put back in.

  “Brave men run,” my mother read the short note, “in my family.”

  The End

  February 10, 2004 ~ September 2, 2005

  March 10 ~ March 17, 2006

  Hesperia, California

  March 14 ~ April 1, 2013

  Long Beach, California

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Geoff, David, Portia, Kris, Stacee, Mike, Cathy, Terry, Gus, Dave, Sean, Paul, and Karen for helping flesh out the kids and teachers in Brave Men Run. You're all in there, in whole or in part, along with more than a few others, and always in my fond memories.

  Also thanks to Jan McGee of The Big Bear Grizzly for prompt and gracious research assistance.

  Much appreciation for Paul Story of dreamwords.com for the unsolicited extra set of eyes, and to Evo Terra and Chris Miller of Podiobooks.com for introducing me to a big chunk of my early community.

  Finally, but not least, thanks to the patrons of my Summer, 2012 crowdfunding campaign. This revised and expanded edition of Brave Men Run would not have come to pass without their generous support.

  About the Author

  Matthew Wayne Selznick is an author and creator living in Long Beach, California with the best gal in the world and too many pets. Brave Men Run -- A Novel of the Sovereign Era is his first book. You can find more about him and his storyworlds at his website, http://www.mattselznick.com. Or, subscribe to his free e-mail newsletter: http://bit.ly/subscribemws.

  Pilgrimage -- A Novel of the Sovereign Era

  A Preview

  From The Journal of Nate Charters – One

  About a year later, I was a celebrity.

  It was stupid.

  It was bad enough people would do a double-take when they saw me in the grocery store, or passed me on the freeway. I was used to that. It's how it's been my whole life. When you look like me, it's just what happens.

  A year after Declaration Day, I was lucky if I didn't see myself as a badly airbrushed artist's rendition on the cover of The Weekly World News in the checkout line.

  Me and Bat Boy, tabloid superstars. Except he's not real.

  I don't think.

  Hard to know for sure, these days.

  On Friday, April 11, 1986, a week before the first anniversary of Declaration Day, the lawyers decided it would be a good idea for me and my mother to be guests on The Azarrio Show.

  So there I was, Nathan Andrew Charters: household name, boy freak, full-on metahuman and fake Sovereign, roasting under the lights and sweating in a big sticky vinyl chair across the stage from the parents of my chil
dhood rival, who were also trying to sue me and my mother into the poorhouse at best, or help the feds throw us in jail at worst.

  It was stupid.

  My throat clenched as the host, Hank Azarrio, strode across the stage. "Okay, gang... we're back from commercial in thirty seconds." He oozed an oily, gunky stink of hairspray, sweat, makeup like swampy clay, and really terrible cologne. I was the only one in the room bothered by that, of course. Just one of my little gifts. "Everybody all set?"

  My mother's "Yes," slipped out of pursed lips. She had righteous indignation to maintain.

  Marc Teslowski, doughy and pink, nodded his square head up and down and blinked his piggy eyes. His wife, Jeri, was either terrified or star struck or maybe both. She smiled with her lips closed and bounced her clenched, knobby little fists in her lap.

  Our lawyers straightened their ties and stuck out their chins. The firm had sent Drake Ottman, a young dude with a soap opera name, to sit in our corner. The name of Teslowski's guy slipped out of my head a second after I broke off our cold handshake.

  What did stick with me was how he tried to avoid my fingernails by curving his hand, even after I'd gone to the trouble of clipping and filing them down for the occasion. I scared some folks. This guy was part of that club.

  It bugged me, sometimes. Not so much, that day.

  The red light over the studio audience blinked. Azarrio ran his hand lightly across his salt-and-pepper-and-cement hair, licked his bushy gross moustache with a thick, pale tongue, and addressed the live camera.

  "We're back on The Azarrio Show with four people at the center of a controversy directly connected to the story of the century... the remarkable phenomenon of the Sovereigns."

  Azarrio indicated me with a wave of his hand that pushed his stench up my sinuses. I suppressed a gag. As much as I didn't want to care, I tried to look cool when one of the cameras zoomed in on my face.

  "This young man, despite the fact that he probably needs no introduction, is Nathan Andrew Charters -- your friends call you Nate, though, right?"

  All the makeup in the world couldn't hide the acne scar pock marks cratering his cheeks. I wondered if that acne had made him a pariah when he was a kid the way my... nature... had made me. I felt the corners of my lips twitch up at the thought of a junior Azarrio having his backpack emptied into a trash can.

  "Nathan's fine," I said.

  Azarrio's eyes narrowed slightly, but the grin beneath his bushy lip stayed steady.

  "Nate, here, is at the center of an ongoing legal battle that has captured the fascination of the entire world. How does it feel to get all that attention, Nate?"

  Asshole acted like I was six, not sixteen.

  Fine. I was getting really good with confrontation.

  Imagining my girlfriend, Lina, in the front row of the studio audience of housewives and unemployed middle-aged twits, I pushed down a little flurry of butterflies in my belly and kept my eyes on Azarrio and off the cameras.

  "Are you asking how it feels to know the same people who turned my dad into a crazy freak and then tried to kill him are trying to pin two murders on me and him and my mom?"

  Azarrio's eyes glittered. It occurred to me that I was feeding him just what he wanted, but screw it. This whole thing was lame. In for a penny, or whatever.

  "I guess it's gonna feel great, once those people end up in prison and PrenticeCambrian and the government cut us a big check and stuff."

  Red light for me, green light for Azarrio. He addressed the camera.

  "Nate's referring to allegations from PrenticeCambrian -- which, by the way, the powers that be want me to mention, is the parent company of some of our affiliate station sponsors -- that his dad, the former scientist Andrew Charters, killed two PrenticeCambrian employees and that Nate himself assaulted a high-ranking executive of PrenticeCambrian subsidiary Tyndale Labs."

  My mother's scent drifted on the currents of the studio air conditioning. It was barbed with tension.

  "Call them what they were."

  She leaned forward in her chair. I imagined someone in the control room give the word to put her on camera. "Assassins."

  "Alleged assassins, as I'm sure PrenticeCambrian's legal team would want us to note." Azarrio wore a mask of concern and empathy that didn't match his almost predatory scent.

  I wondered if that was what this was for him... if he looked at his guests like prey to corner so he could extract reactions that would bring high ratings for his time slot.

  I hoped my mother kept it together, even if I felt my own irritation scratching like bugs multiplying under my skin.

  "Ask Marc Teslowski if there's any question on that point." She acted like he wasn't eight feet away from her. Dude was suing us too, after all. "It's his son those assassins," she hissed the word, drawing it out, "nearly gutted in my mother-in-law's driveway."

  I don't think Azarrio liked my mother directing his show for him. Instead of turning his attention to Teslowski, he addressed the camera, smooth as sculpted shit.

  "Ms. Charters refers to young Bryon Teslowski, the teen-aged boy hospitalized after the incident at Kirby Lake left two dead under circumstances that are at the heart of the Charters' legal battle with PrenticeCambrian, the government, and, in a related but seperate case, the Teslowskis."

  Now he faced Marc Teslowski, who held the arms of his chair in a white-knuckle grip. Teslowski didn't look at me in the same way my mother didn't look at him.

  So, I made sure to stare, hard, at him.

  "Marc and Jeri Teslowski," Azarrio said, "you contend that your son Byron, who the Sovereign claim as one of their own under the controversial Sovereign Compromise, is being illegally held at the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies near Missoula, Montana."

  "That's right." Teslowski spoke through gritted teeth. "Everybody knows that."

  "And you hold the Charters -- including Nate's father, Andrew Charters, a fugitive and suspect in the killings -- responsible. How, exactly?"

  Teslowski turned to look at me at last. I let the shit-eating grin I'd been holding back push slowly at the corners of my mouth. I kept my eyes on his.

  "That punk helped my kid make a break for it--"

  Teslowski's lawyer put his skittish hand on Teslowski's shoulder. "We intend to show that Nathan Charters," he made his voice project, "very likely with the cooperation of his father, and on behalf of the Sovereign, conspired to create an opportunity by which the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies could apprehend Byron Teslowski."

  Our boy Drake spoke up. He had a voice like that DJ on KLOS who plays the whole albums on Sunday night; deep and slow. "As our suite brought against PrenticeCambrian and the United States will show, those accusations have no basis in fact." It didn't fit his face.

  I looked away from Teslowski to glance at the audience. They were getting into our little circus.

  Azarrio acknowledged both attorneys with a nod of his head and turned back to Teslowski. "Marc, you and Jeri also have a civil suite against the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies to get your son back. Why isn't this a case of criminal kidnapping?"

  Teslowski's face darkened. "The god-damned Sovereign Compromise." I imagined someone in the control room hitting the "bleep" button.

  Azarrio shook his head and looked as if he wanted to "tut-tut" into his microphone. His sympathy didn't reach his eyes.

  "Mrs. Teslowski... Jeri..." She went as white as her husband was red. "How long has it been since you've seen your son?"

  She swallowed and looked at her hands. My smarmy grin felt a little tired. I didn't have a problem with Byron's mom. She still had to live with her husband.

  At least Byron got out.

  "It was..." She glanced past me, I guess to my mother. I didn't see any blame in her face. Figured. The Teslowskis might be suing us, but it must be all Marc Teslowski's idea.

  "It was May 4th, last year."

  Azarrio seemed to actually soften for a second. "That's a long time."

  S
he nodded, birdlike.

  Azarrio turned to me. "What about you, Nate? Byron's a friend of yours... the Donner Institute is assisting you and your mother in your legal battles... have you heard from Byron Teslowski? Maybe chat on the phone?"

  "Nope."

  I think Azarrio expected me to say something else. When I just looked at him, he ad libbed, "Do you think he's being held against his will?"

  My mother said, "You don't have to answer that -- Drake, should he answer --"

  "Knowing how things were," I said quickly, before Drake could speak up, "I bet Byron's fine."

  Marc Teslowski grunted. Azarrio met my eyes like we were partners in his little show.

  "Why do you say that?"

  Byron Teslowski had made my life hell for years. He somehow made it okay to pick on the weird kid with the odd bone structure and giant eyes when no one would even think of making fun of Tom Harper in his wheelchair, or Keri Whats-her-name with one leg all bent and shorter than the other one.

  We hit high school, and he filled out, and girls liked him, and he kicked ass at every sport he tried. All along, he kept pushing at me, making sure everybody kept thinking I was the weird kid. He ended up with a whole little gang of jocks and cheerleaders in orbit around his smirking face. I could count my friends on one hand and not need my thumb.

  Declaration Day changed everything. I learned some things about Byron. About his dad.

  Which is why I helped Byron a year before, but not in the way the Teslowskis thought. It's also why I answered Hank Azarrio the way I did.

  "Because his dad's a prick."

  A groan of disapproval flowed off the audience. Azarrio, his back to them and fully aware the live camera was on me for the moment, actually gave me a wink. He was quick about it, and made sure he closed his left eye -- the one the Teslowskis couldn't see.

  Asshole.

  He turned his back on me and faced the audience while a different camera put him in frame.

  "Strong words from a young man in the eye of the storm." His tone hit perfect notes of concerned disapproval. "When we come back, we'll hear what our audience thinks. After this."