Ajeet had achieved some level of success with all his studying. He was the first Thakore in hundreds of years to understand enough of the Philosopher’s Stone to make some of the simpler substances described in its pages: explosives, acids that would eat the toughest of substances, knockout gases, sleeping potions, the invisibility potion Neha had drunk, and others. Ajeet had not unlocked all of the Philosopher Stone’s secrets, however. Not even close. There were tantalizing descriptions in the book of mind-blowing substances: love potions, a liquid that would transmute objects into solid gold, healing elixirs, beverages giving their drinker superhuman strength and endurance, gases that would turn people into stone, and so many others. Ajeet’s understanding of ancient Sanskrit was not advanced enough for him to successfully make those more complex substances. Precision and exactness were all-important. Add an unnecessary extra gram of a component to a potion, and the drinker who was trying to heal himself would instead go mad, or his limbs would shrivel and fall off, or his blood pressure would increase so dramatically that he would explode, or something equally horrific. Mistranslate a formula, and the pebble you were trying to make impossible to pick up would collapse in on itself and take an entire city along with it.
It was beyond frustrating to Ajeet that he could not yet create the more complicated substances described in the Philosopher’s Stone. He was convinced they held the key to him recapturing the glory of his illustrious ancestors, the ones who had made the world tremble at the sound of the name Thakore. Without those substances, he was stuck working in a low-status job, under the supervision of people far less educated than he. His doctorate from an Indian university was not respected here in the United States. Sometimes he regretted immigrating here, the so-called land of opportunity. Yes, there were plenty of opportunities if you were white and connected to the right people, but Ajeet was neither. His job as a chemical technician at Burke Pharmaceuticals had been the best one he could get to support his family. The whites he worked under made fun of him. Including his supervisor Oliver Meaney, a British national who, like Ajeet, had immigrated to America. Ajeet’s coworkers didn’t think he knew how they talked about him behind his back, but he did. They made fun of his name, his accent, his dark skin, his clothes, his coke-bottle glasses, and the way Rati’s deliciously pungent cooking made him smell. They called him Apu behind his back, after the brown-skinned Simpsons character who spoke with a heavy Indian accent. Provincial dolts. Ajeet’s family was conquering empires when their European ancestors were huddling in caves, picking lice off each other, and trying to master fire. He hated them. One day, he would show them who the superior was and who was the inferior. The contempt they showed for Ajeet and the resentment he in return had for them was one of the reasons he had used his powers and the Philosopher’s Stone to steal as the Alchemist. In the Alchemist’s all-black costume and ski mask, he felt powerful. Like one of his conquering ancestors.
Ajeet thought he had come up with a means of understand the Philosopher Stone’s more complicated formulas. He was almost certain an elixir he had carefully concocted over the course of many weeks with the book’s help would boost his intelligence immeasurably, allowing him to decipher the many secrets of the book that still eluded him. Almost certain were the operative words. He was not positive he had gotten the formula exactly right. He had made the mistake of telling Rati about the elixir. Whether or not he should drink it was one of the few things they had ever fought about. Rati had made him swear to not drink the elixir.
“It’s too dangerous,” she had said. Though it pained him to do so, he had given her his word he would not drink the elixir. The purple liquid, glowing with an inner fire, sat in a stopped beaker next to the Philosopher’s Stone. It had been there for weeks. Despite giving Rati his word, Ajeet had not had the heart to throw the substance out.
Ajeet pushed thoughts of the purple elixir aside. Trying to ignore Neha’s incessant wails so he could concentrate, he opened the Philosopher’s Stone, and got to work. He thought he could get the potion he had in mind right without consulting the book, but better safe than sorry. He could not afford to make a mistake.
Ajeet mixed the correct chemicals together in their proper proportions and in the proper order as dictated by the Philosopher’s Stone. When he finished about half an hour after he had begun, he had a small wooden bowl about a quarter full of a mud brown liquid.
Ajeet took the bowl to Neha. She still sat clutching the table, still howling. Ajeet felt perverse pride at her lung capacity.
“Drink this baby,” he said, trying to bring the bowl to her lips. “It will make you feel better.” Neha swatted the bowl away, nearly spilling its contents. Ajeet cursed, making Neha cry all the louder. It was worse than nails on a blackboard. His pride in her lung capacity was beginning to fade.
After much coaxing and soothing, Ajeet finally got Neha to swallow the contents of the bowl, though it took almost as long as it had to make the stuff. A few moments after she swallowed the potion, she stopped crying. Her breathing returned to normal. Her eyelids drooped, though they did not close completely. The potion was a mild sedative which also had a hypnotic effect.
Ajeet squatted on the floor in front of his now quiet daughter.
“Can you hear me baby?”
“Yes Papa,” Neha said. Despite how sleepy she appeared, her voice was strong and clear.
“Can you answer some questions for me?”
“Depends on what they are.” Neha’s arch tone suggested he had asked a stupid question. Sometimes he wished his daughter was not quite so precocious.
“When you were in the closet in Papa’s bedroom earlier today, did you see what happened to Momma through the slats in the door?”
“Yes.” The answer was devoid of emotion.
“Tell me all about it,” Ajeet said. His throat was tight.
In an unemotional tone that suggested she was reciting what she had for lunch rather than how her mother had been gruesomely murdered, Neha told the story of what had happened. Though Neha’s intellect was still maturing, already she had an eidetic memory. Ajeet had no doubt she had a genius level IQ, or close to it. With the shock of what she had witnessed blocked for now by his potion, Ajeet knew everything Neha told him was an accurate account of what had occurred. The details made Ajeet sick to his stomach, but he forced himself to listen to all of them:
Shortly after Ajeet had gone to work that morning, three men came into the house. They must have picked the lock, Ajeet thought, as he had not seen any sign of forced entry. Rati and Neha had been upstairs at the time. Rati had kept Neha home from kindergarten because she was coming down with a cold. Once Rati heard the home invaders, she made Neha drink Ajeet’s invisibility potion. She had told Neha to hide in the closet and to not make a sound or come out no matter what she saw or heard.
Men wearing gloves had come upstairs, found Rati in the master bedroom, pointed a gun at her, and demanded that she tell them where the Philosopher’s Stone was. Despite the gun pressed to her temple, she told them she did not know what they were talking about.
Two of the men searched downstairs while the third continued to hold Rati at gunpoint in the bedroom. The two men eventually came back upstairs and searched up there. When they found nothing, they returned to Rati, demanding again that she tell them where the Philosopher’s Stone was. Again, Rati denied knowing what they were talking about.
At the suggestion of one of the men, two of them began to beat Rati with their fists and the gun. The third man tried to stop them. The other two mocked him and called him names for not being willing to do what needed to be done. They threatened to kill him for being “a weak bitch.”
Neha watched it all happen through the slats in the closet door. She had been terrified. Nonetheless, she wanted to leave the closet and help her mother, but Rati had made her promise to stay in the closet, hidden and silent. Both her parents had emphasized the importance of obeying them and keeping her word. So she stayed in the closet even though sh
e did not want to.
The two men continued to beat and torture Rati. They ripped her clothes off her, shamed and ridiculed her body, and pulled her long hair out of her head clumps at a time. Eventually, she passed out from all the abuse.
The man who initiated Rati’s beating then unzipped his pants. “Either this curry cunt doesn’t know anything about the stone, or she’s too stubborn to tell us,” he had said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m gonna get something out of this.”
He proceeded to rape Rati both genitally and anally. Neha did not know those words of course—she was too young to even know what sex was—but from her detailed description, it was clear that was what had happened.
Once the first man had his way with Rati, the other one who had beaten Rati took his turn. That was how the first rapist had put it after he had pulled out of Rati: “Time to take your turn.” The third man again tried to stop the other two, but they said they’d shoot him if he did not stop his whining.
After the two men finished pleasuring themselves with Rati’s unconscious body, the first rapist shot Rati twice in the chest. Then, all three left. Neha had wanted to come out of the closet then to help her mother, but she had promised to stay in the closet until her mother fetched her or told her to come out. Since her mother had done neither, Neha stayed in the closet for hours until Ajeet came home from work and found her there.
Ajeet was shaking with emotion by the time Neha finished telling him what had happened. Fury, pride, and sorrow swirled within him.
Fury for the obvious reasons.
Pride because Rati had refused to tell the men about the Philosopher’s Stone despite the fact she knew exactly where Ajeet kept it and how to access this bunker. She had known what the Philosopher’s Stone meant to him. By remaining silent, Rati had demonstrated how dedicated she was to Ajeet and his dreams of glory. It had been her final act of love and devotion to him.
Sorrow because Ajeet wished Rati had told the men what they wanted to know. Though the book was priceless, Rati was by far more priceless. He would set fire to the Philosopher’s Stone if there was even a ghost of a chance doing so would bring Rati back.
“What did these men look like?” Ajeet asked Neha. It was an effort for him to not scream the words.
Neha told him. Incredibly, what she said made Ajeet’s waking nightmare even worse.
Ajeet stood, dizzy, nauseous, the world spinning around him. He staggered back, hitting the concrete wall behind him. He slid to the floor, his legs unable to support his weight.
It’s all my fault, he thought.
Ajeet knew the men Neha had described: Austin Miller, Peter Lighthouse, and Bart Wood. Ajeet occasionally teamed up with the three white men to pull off robberies he did not think he could handle by himself. They were more ruthless than Ajeet was. Though they were not educated men, they had a toughness Ajeet had admired. They were, if not his friends, then certainly his comrades-in-arms, sharing a camaraderie forged by the crimes they had committed together. Or at least Ajeet had thought they were comrades. What kinds of comrades did this to someone’s wife? Truly there was no honor among thieves.
Two weeks ago, the four of them had robbed a bank. Flush with post-heist euphoria, Ajeet had gone out drinking with the three afterwards. Drunk on beer and unaccustomed bonhomie—between his obsession with the Philosopher’s Stone and his family life, Ajeet had no time for friends—Ajeet had let slip that the substances he used as the Alchemist were thanks to the Philosopher’s Stone.
Now, Ajeet realized after listening to Neha, the three had decided to take the Philosopher’s Stone away from Ajeet and use it for their own purposes. Little did they know they did not have the knowledge nor the learning to use it. Ajeet had not told them it was a book written in an ancient language. They probably thought it was the stone of legend, as easy to use as waving a magic wand. Thank the gods Ajeet had not told the three men that he had a child. If he had, they might have taken pains to find and kill Neha.
It’s all my fault, he thought again as he slumped against the wall. If it weren’t for my peacocking, my drunken braggadocio, Rati would still be alive.
Ajeet sat sprawled on the hard floor of the septic tank for a while, full of self-loathing and recriminations, barely able to move. Barely able to breathe. The heavy weight of guilt pressed against his chest.
Ajeet’s mind slowly turned to the oath he swore to kill the men who had done this to Rati. Now that he knew who they were, he could find and kill them.
And yet, Ajeet was unable to get up. Unable to act.
He realized, to his great shame, that he was afraid. Fear paralyzed him. He had never hurt anyone before, much less killed someone. Despite his nocturnal exploits as the Alchemist, Ajeet at heart was a scholar. A scientist. Not a killer. Not a man of action or a conqueror like his ancient ancestors had been. Austin, Peter, and Bart were rough customers who made their living with their toughness and their fists. Austin in particular was formidable. He was an Alpha-level Meta with a touch of super strength. He was the ringleader of the three.
He was also the one who had suggested the men beat Rati, who had initiated her rape, and who had shot her in the chest.
The thought of those atrocities pulled Ajeet to his feet. His body felt like it belonged to someone else. He staggered to the wooden table the Philosopher’s Stone rested on. If he could unlock all the book’s secrets, he would not be afraid of Austin and the others. He would not be afraid of anyone.
Everyone would be afraid of him.
He picked up the beaker holding the purple elixir he had concocted, the one that held the promise of unlocking the rest of the book’s potent secrets. That held the promise of unlimited power. That held the promise of vengeance.
Ajeet pulled out the beaker’s cork. He hesitated at the strong smell of the elixir. If he had not gotten the intelligence-boosting formula exactly right, drinking the elixir could kill him. Or cripple him. Or drive him mad. Or any number of terrible prospects. Ajeet looked at Neha. She still sat droopy-eyed on the floor, staring straight ahead, looking at nothing. He was the only parent she had left. His and Rati’s extended families were still in India. If something happened to him, what would become of Neha? Who would take care of her?
Besides, had he not promised Rati to not drink the elixir?
Ajeet shook his head. Rati was dead because of him. On her memory, on their love, on their daughter’s life, he had sworn an oath of vengeance. Regardless of the danger, regardless of his fears, he had to satisfy that oath. He had to make things right. Or at least as right as they ever could be.
Ajeet upended the beaker and drank. The elixir was thick, almost oily, hard to swallow. Despite the consistency, the taste was not unpleasant. The liquid was mildly effervescent, like a flat soda.
The beaker was now empty. Ajeet waited, breathing heavily, not knowing what to expect.
For several long seconds, nothing happened.
The beaker slipped from Ajeet’s hand when he doubled over. His thick glasses slid off his face. Both the glasses and the beaker hit the cement floor, shattering simultaneously.
Ajeet began to scream.
CHAPTER 14
Eighteen Years Ago
Ajeet flung open the door of the roadside bar. It was almost as dark inside Roy’s Tavern as the night was outside.
People turned to stare and conversations stopped as Ajeet strode through the windowless, smoky bar. Roy’s Tavern off of Interstate 95 outside of Wilmington was frequented by bikers, truckers, and low-level criminals, all of them white men. Ajeet’s dark skin would have stood out like a black man at a Ku Klux Klan rally even if Ajeet had not been garbed in his new purple and black costume. He had chosen black as an homage to his Alchemist costume. He had chosen purple partly as a nod to the color of the elixir he had drank days before. Mostly he had chosen purple because it was the color of royalty.
Ajeet casually dropped some of his alchemy cartridges on the floor as he made his way through the bar. Each
cartridge hissed softly, unheard by the crowded bar’s patrons over the rock music blaring over the sound system. Ajeet’s long purple cape swished softly as he strode purposefully to the back of the bar. Three pool tables were there, all of them in use. Cigarette and marijuana smoke hung over them like a thin cloud.
Austin Miller was bent over a table, stick in hand, lining up a shot. Peter Lighthouse was there too, holding a cue and standing on the other side of the table, looking like he prayed Austin would miss. Bart Wood, lanky and balding, sat on a nearby stool, smoking a joint, blearily watching his friends’ game.
Peter’s prayers were answered. Austin missed. Austin cursed, and straightened up. He noticed Ajeet standing there, staring at him. Austin’s mouth curled in amusement around the lit cigarette dangling there.
“Ain’t it a little early for Halloween, buddy?” Austin said.
“Today’s not Halloween,” Ajeet said. “Today is Judgment Day. For you, Peter, and Bart.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Austin said. “And I don’t want to know. So why don’t you go back to whatever insane asylum let you out?” Tall and broad with his head shaved bald, Austin was an intimidating tough guy accustomed to pushing people around.
“I’m talking about Rati Thakore. You beat, raped, and killed her.” Ajeet’s voice was cold, calm, and implacable.
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Austin said. Austin was such a convincing liar that had it not been for Neha’s eyewitness testimony, Ajeet might have believed him.
“I recognize those gauntlets,” Peter suddenly interjected. “Ajeet?”
Austin’s eyes narrowed as he peered at the head of the man in the purple cowl before him. “Oh shit, it is Ajeet,” he realized. He looked startled and guilty for an instant before he recovered his composure. “I didn’t recognize you in the new getup. Where’s the Alchemist outfit? Even aside from the duds, you look different. Bigger. Taller.”
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