Elite 2: The Wrong Side of Revolution

by Joseph C. Anthony

  After the detective had everything he needed from Daniel, he led him from the ambulance back over to one of the patrol cars, only this time he let Daniel stand outside and lean against it rather than trapping him in the back seat.

  “Wait here,” the plain-clothed officer told him as he walked over to join a congregation of other officers a few dozen yards away.

  Daniel took a deep breath as he glanced around the crime scene. There were victims in blankets being led away by loved ones in every direction. It seemed the atmosphere had transformed into one of calm and relief. A potentially deadly situation had been successfully diffused and none of the innocent had been harmed. Daniel couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride with his heroics.

  That only lasted until he looked to his left and noticed Richfield talking with Gordon Demérs. Demérs had both arms wrapped firmly around Jordan who was now wrapped in a grey wool blanket. She did not speak, just pressed the side of her head into Demérs’ chest and kept her eyes pointed down. Both Richfield and Demérs appeared animated as they continued their discussion.

  Daniel sighed and dropped his chin to his chest. Seeing the three of them brought him to the realization of the danger he had put Jordan in by leaving her alone in the bathroom. Had he failed to take out all three bad guys, it was likely they would have searched every room and found Jordan locked in the bathroom, and if they had…

  He shook his head to try and rid himself of the grim possibility. What was important was that he had taken out all three men and had managed to keep not only Jordan but every person in that store safe while doing it.

  Daniel looked up in time to see Richfield walking in his direction. Jordan and Demérs were nowhere to be seen.

  Daniel tried to remain calm as his ex-CIA boss strode toward him. Whatever the consequences of his actions, he would accept them without regret.

  “Hello hero boy,” Richfield remarked as he neared Daniel.

  He had meant to remain absolutely quiet, but before he knew it Daniel was blurting out an explanation.

  “I know I screwed up,” he began, “I had every intention of staying with her but she kept insisting that I do something. I know that shouldn’t matter but she broke me down. And I kept her in a safe place and gave her my gun.”

  Daniel started to go on but his brain finally caught up to his mouth and ordered it to shut up.

  “If it were up to me I’d suspend you,” Richfield stated firmly. “But unfortunately Gordon Demérs doesn’t see it that way.”

  Daniel’s eyes widened. That must have been the basis of the conversation he had witnessed between Richfield and Demérs. It also explained why Jordan hadn’t felt the need to speak—Demérs had been speaking for her.

  “You’re just lucky you pulled it off,” Richfield continued. “People love heroes. Had your actions resulted in his fiancé being killed he might feel differently, but instead she came away without a scratch and neither of them knows any better.”

  Richfield took another deep breath, as if almost regretful that Daniel had been successful in saving everyone.

  “He’s impressed,” Richfield concluded. “He is demanding that you continue to be assigned to him from now on, including remaining on this particular assignment.”

  Daniel did his absolute best to maintain a serious expression and not show any joy in Demérs’ approval of his actions. He knew Richfield would not be happy about having to go against his will and obey the wishes of an ordinary citizen, but Demérs was a high-profile client that Richfield couldn’t afford to lose.

  “Let’s get outta here,” Richfield commented, taking a look around at the rest of the crime scene. “There’s a coffee shop a couple blocks over.”

  Richfield grabbed Daniel by the shoulder and guided him around the patrol car.

  “Sam-may!” Richfield yelled to his left. A tall black man in a Chicago P.D. jacket lifted his head away from a conversation with a uniformed officer and eventually found Richfield waving at him.

  “I’m taking my guy!” Richfield yelled to the man.

  Sammy made an impartial face and waved his left arm forward as if to say “get outta here.”

  “Here,” Richfield said to Daniel, handing him a large Zip-Lock bag.

  Daniel took the bag. Inside were Daniel’s wallet, phone, and gun. He took his things out of the bag and stored them in their proper places on his person.

  Richfield and Daniel both ordered a medium black coffee and took a seat in the back of the coffee shop. Daniel placed his lips on the plastic lid and slowly took a sip of his coffee as not to burn his tongue. He swallowed and felt the warm beverage sooth his throat.

  Richfield spoke for the first time since leaving the crime scene. “You’ll be remaining the top ranked agent at the complex.”

  Daniel paused. After hearing that Demérs wanted to keep him on he hadn’t even considered the possibility that he could still fall from the top ranking.

  Richfield continued with his reasoning.

  “Demérs is a guy that knows a lot of people—Important people. If I assign someone else to those people they’re going to be demanding to know why they aren’t getting the same guy as Gordon Demérs—that guy who stopped the jewelry store robbery.”

  Daniel nodded, not sure how to feel at this point. A part of him felt as though he should be ashamed for breaking the cardinal rule of personal security, but he couldn’t shake the sense of pride he felt from saving lives.

  Taking the situation into his own hands at the jewelry store could have potentially been a career-ending move, but now it seemed to have turned into a career-making one. He couldn’t wait to get back to the complex and talk about it over a beer with Charlie and Shifty.

  Richfield took a long sip of his coffee and set it back down on the small, round table between them. He looked up from his cup and back at Daniel.

  “Did you really chuck a guy across the room?”

  After finishing their coffee, Richfield walked with Daniel back to Demérs’ building, where a black town car was waiting to pick him up. They said their goodbyes and without so much as a handshake Richfield got into his car and Daniel climbed the steps to the front doors of the apartment building.

  When the elevator doors slid open at the top floor of the building, Daniel was greeted by Salvador standing at the other end of the hallway with his hand inside his jacket, ready to draw his firearm at the first sign of trouble. When he realized it was only Daniel, he pulled his hand back out of his jacket and took a seat in the cushioned wooden chair beside the door.

  “I don’t think any jewelry store thieves will be coming after her,” Daniel remarked.

  “Sorry,” Salvador said out of formality. “Everyone is feeling a little skittish around here after this afternoon.”

  Salvador pulled out his phone and jumped back into a game of Candy Crush as Daniel made his way to the door of the penthouse.

  “Understandable,” Daniel responded, feeling as though he himself should have been a little more shaken up after the robbery attempt.

  To him, the robbery was something that had just happened, and stopping it had been a risky move that went far beyond his own safety. Now that it was all over and he had come away victorious, he had already managed to put it behind him.

  He walked into the apartment to find Demérs and Jordan in sweats, snuggled up on the couch watching TV. They both turned to see who was disturbing their peaceful environment.

  “Well if it isn’t the man of the hour,” Demérs said softly.

  Jordan sat upright when she saw Daniel come in.

  “Daniel,” she spoke as if she had just woken up from a nap, “are you okay?” She threw her now ragged brown hair to one side as she asked the question.

  “I’m fine,” Daniel replied, remembering the cuts on his face. His bottom lip and the area just above his right cheekbone felt a bit swollen. He would need to lie down and heal himself as Horchoff had shown him.

  Jordan started to get up but Daniel stopped her.r />
  “Stay there,” he told her. “I’m just going to go lie down.”

  “You’re free to join us,” Demérs offered as Daniel headed toward the staircase.

  “That’s okay,” Daniel declined. Sitting around and watching television while the two of them cuddled on the other end of the couch wasn’t what he needed right now.

  “I’m going to get cleaned up and let myself heal,” he told them.

  “Well we’re getting Chinese food for dinner in a little while. Feel free to come down and join us when you’re ready,” Demérs told him as Daniel made his way up the stairs to the loft area.

  “Thank you, I will,” Daniel accepted. For some reason he almost felt like crying. This man who he had spent so much time hating for so long was now being so kind. What Demérs didn’t realize was that Daniel owed him everything. Demérs’ support was the only thing launching Daniel forward rather than backward.

  “Daniel,” Jordan called out as he reached the top of the staircase. He turned to see her steel blue eyes looking up at him while her head rested on Demérs’ lap. “I’m proud of you.”

  Daniel gave a half nod and turned to head toward the shower. He wiped away a single tear once he was out of sight.

  After his shower Daniel managed to lose himself in his healing trance, displacing any sense of time or space as he worked to repair and rebuild his tissue at an accelerated rate. It wasn’t until nine o’clock that he finally came out of it.

  He felt extremely hungry, realizing that he hadn’t eaten since he and Jordan had lunch at the café before going to the jewelry store. He forced himself out of bed and made his way to the living room.

  As he reached the top of the stairs he noticed Demérs and Jordan right where he’d left them on the couch, their faces lit by the solitary glow of the television screen. Daniel was surprised to still see them there as Jordan always hated sitting around for extended periods of time. He guessed that today was a rather special circumstance.

  When he reached the bottom of the staircase he noticed that each now had a drink in front of them on the glass coffee table. Jordan had a beer bottle of some sort, while Demérs seemed to be enjoying a glass of scotch, neat.

  “Hello sleepy head,” Jordan spoke, again sounding like she had just woken up. “There’s leftover Chinese in the fridge. Help yourself,” she told him.

  Daniel smiled, unsure if Jordan could even see him in the darkness, and headed for the kitchen. Demérs just kept his eyes forward on the TV screen.

  Daniel warmed up some leftover chicken and vegetable dish and some rice, once again surprised at his level of comfort in doing so. He wondered how different the atmosphere must have been when Titan had been the agent assigned to them.

  Daniel sat and ate his dinner on a stool at the island counter in the kitchen, facing the TV. No one spoke a word the entire time he was eating.

  When he was finished he rinsed his plate and climbed back up the stairs to his room. It appeared as though both Demérs and Jordan were now half asleep. He wondered if Salvador was still sitting outside the door, and if so, for how long he was expected to stay there.

  He put that thought away and flipped on the TV in his bedroom. He flopped down on the bed and wondered what adventures tomorrow would bring.

  When he woke in the morning he could hear the sound of the shower running downstairs. He went down to the living room and found it empty. He creeped down the hallway peering into each room, and found no signs of life. It appeared that Jordan and Demérs were in the shower together.

  Daniel rolled his eyes and went back out into the main room. Apparently they too had become very comfortable with his presence in their home.

  He looked around the room and tried to find something to take his mind off of his ex-lover and current client making their best efforts to conserve water. He decided he would make up his own workout routine.

  He ran toward the spiral staircase and leapt up with his left leg, putting as much power into his calves, quads and hamstrings as he could. He rose almost halfway up the staircase, and quickly pushed off of the small section of stair that protruded out past the railing, and sprung himself up toward the balcony. When he was in range he grabbed onto the railing and swung himself over the top, feet first. The whole move took just under three seconds.

  From there he moved to the top of the staircase. He grabbed onto the railing and straightened his arms, lifting his feet several inches off the ground. Arms locked, he bent his knees slightly to keep his feet from hitting each step, and walked himself down to the bottom of the staircase. When he reached the bottom he paused for a moment, and then began the more difficult climb back to the top.

  When he arrived back at the top of the railing having successfully used his upper body and core strength to walk his hands up and down the staircase, he reached over and grabbed back onto the balcony railing. He did ten pull-ups on the railing before reaching his arm out to his left and pulling himself over a foot or two, and proceeded to do ten more pull-ups. He repeated the process until he reached the end of the railing, then reversed his course and made his way back to the start.

  When he was finished, he noticed the shower was no longer running and let himself drop to the floor a story below. He landed on his feet in a squat, then sprung himself forward and sprinted to the top of the staircase, lifting his knees and planting a foot on each step as he climbed.

  After reaching the top he smiled and made his way to his own shower, satisfied with his makeshift acrobatic performance.

  In workouts that did not require especially extreme conscious control of his body functions, he now found it difficult to tell whether he had needed to open his neural pathways or not. He had so much practice with it that his conscious mind now understood what it was capable of and took over on an almost subconscious level. It was the same sensation of any athlete who reached their limit and told themselves to “push harder,” only Daniel’s mind interpreted “push harder” on a biological level, and also knew how to send the appropriate neurological commands to his muscles via the unconscious part of the brain that was designed to do so.

  It was as though Doctor Horchoff had formally introduced his frontal lobe to the rest of his brain for the first time, and they had now become BFFs.

  The remainder of Sunday was a rather uninteresting one, which Daniel was more than okay with after the day previous. Salvador had the day off and rather than being the fearless protector Daniel settled into the role of third wheel, though he made sure to stay on his guard when they left the apartment. If there was one thing he had done right the day before it had been recognizing the threat before it fully developed.

  At first it seemed that Jordan had no desire to leave the apartment—and who could blame her?—but after a few hours boredom eventually set in and she and Demérs decided to go out to lunch and a matinee. They elected to take Daniel along and Daniel wasn’t sure if it was out of the need for protection or out of obligation to their guest. Regardless, Daniel was happy to get out of the penthouse for a few hours.

  Though it was fairly awkward going out with Jordan and her fiancé/his client, Daniel couldn’t complain about another free meal and a free movie ticket. Jordan had requested to eat at a sandwich shop down the street from the theater and Demérs was happy to oblige. Daniel was happy to find that there were still some aspects of the simple life that hadn’t escaped Jordan.

  As they ate their sandwiches, Jordan noticed the state of Daniel’s face and hands for the first time.

  “Your cuts,” she said, touching her own face, “they’re almost gone.”

  Daniel felt his face, remembering that he had taken the bandages off before entering his healing trance the night before. This morning when he looked in the mirror he had completely forgotten all about them.

  “I heal quickly,” he countered, trying to play it off. “And the doctor at Elite gives me this special healing cream stuff that really makes a difference.” He hoped the room wasn’t beginning to stink from
the utter bullshit flying out of his mouth.

  “I’m going to have to find out how I can get some of that,” Demérs remarked, not fully believing Daniel’s story.

  The movie they went to see was a new fantasy tale about a young man who travels through a interdimensional portal that takes him to a land where he discovers the true origins of different mythological creatures.

  Daniel was truly grateful for Jordan’s interest in fantasy films, because he had absolutely no desire to sit through a romantic comedy with an engaged couple beside him.

  Demérs tried to sit between them when they found their seats in the theater, but Jordan quickly suggested that she sit in the middle. Demérs obliged and if he was perturbed by the suggestion, he did a fantastic job of hiding it.

  Throughout the movie Jordan was whispering questions to Daniel, trying to keep the plot twists straight in her mind. She had always felt that asking so many questions made her annoying to watch movies with, but in reality Daniel had always found it adorable. He was more than happy to give his thoughts on what they were watching and found that it also kept him more involved in the story.

  After the movie—which was fantastic—the trio spent the rest of the evening in the apartment drinking wine and telling stories. For dinner they had Mediterranean food delivered, which made Daniel wonder if the couple ever made any meals of their own.

  They were able to pass hours just catching up and learning more about each other. Both Demérs and Jordan found themselves captivated by some of the stories Daniel told about his training and assignments at Elite. Jordan couldn’t stop laughing at some of the stories about Charlie and Shifty, and by the end of the night she was insistent that she be able to meet them one day soon.

  Surprisingly—or not—Daniel couldn’t decide—Jordan and Gordon had come to feel like real friends, and not strangers. That shouldn’t have been a surprise with Jordan given their history, but he hadn’t expected to feel that way with Demérs. It seemed all ill-will had disappeared almost completely.