The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage

by Selznick, Matthew Wayne

  There was some sympathy in her voice now. “You don’t know that. The people at the Institute—"

  “Fuck them! Do you seriously trust them?” I knew she didn’t.

  “Honestly, Nathan, I don’t know. But they’ve been helping us, all along.” When I opened my mouth, she held up her hand. “Whether it’s more to serve them than us, I don’t know…but they’ve been helping us. Why not find out?”

  I realized that this wasn’t going to go anywhere. She was going to continue trying to play parent, only her idea of parenting was now apparently pushing my problems off on the fucking Sovereigns. I was pretty sure their number-one concern was how my particular case could help them, not so much how they could help me.

  I already felt like I was their puppet in the whole legal thing with PrenticeCambrian and the government and the Teslowskis. My mother wanted to actually put me someplace where they could literally pull my strings any way they wanted.

  Parent of the Year, second year running.

  I was on my own.

  It was a calming realization, in a way.

  “Can I think about it?”

  “Sleep on it,” she said. “I can see you’re dead on your feet; one of us will sleep tonight. Tomorrow morning, assuming you’re right about…things…we’ll have a chance to work out a plan.”

  She lowered her head and kept her eyes on me. “The plan will not include finding your father, Nathan. I hope you understand why.”

  I sighed. “Fine, Mom.” I turned to walk toward the hallway, and my bedroom. “Maybe if I could talk to Byron.”

  “Maybe it can be arranged.” She was already sounding more relaxed.

  I nodded.

  “Nathan,” she said, “I understand you’re worried. God knows, after what you’ve told me tonight, I’m worried too. We have to be so careful, though. You understand what’s at stake, I know you do.”

  I didn’t give a fuck what was at stake, beyond figuring out my own shit.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I do.” I took a step back. “I’m gonna go to bed.”

  She nodded and looked away. “All right. Try not to worry. We’ll figure something out.”

  I waited a beat, just to test her. She’d stopped wishing me good night a few months after she’d stopped saying she loved me.

  That was fine.

  Her silence helped me.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Fourteen

  The police didn’t come to our door in the middle of the night. If they came by Thursday morning, I wasn’t around to find out. I called Jason and woke him up at four a.m.; by four-thirty, I had snuck out of the house and met him at the Gas ‘n’ Sip down the street.

  The heat was on in the Bonneville. It felt good.

  “Dude.” Jason looked tired. “This is it for a while.”

  I felt like I should, I don’t know, clasp him on the shoulder in a manly fashion or give him a hug or something. That wasn’t our style, so much, so I settled for a somber nod. “I know. Thanks.”

  He shrugged it off, dropped the car into gear, and popped the parking brake. “So this time I get to go to Kirby Lake.”

  “This time isn’t like the last time.”

  “Guess so,” he said. “So, you think your mom’s friend is just gonna be cool with you showing up on his door? Won’t he just call her to come get you?”

  “Probably.” I looked out the window, feeling glum. The last time I’d made this trip, Lina had been driving. Things had been shitty then, too, but at least she was with me.

  “So why bother?”

  “I’m counting on Denver being on my side. After all, he’s been watching out for my dad all these years. He even kept the fact of my dad being alive from my mom.”

  “What good’s that going to do if your mom just ends up scooping you up?”

  I scowled. This wasn’t a great time for Jason to start being all reasonable. “Even if she does, I’m hoping my being up there, like, already, will, like, force the issue. Y’know?”

  “Oh.”

  Jason got up on the freeway. I turned on the radio. He drove, I changed the station when commercials came on or the morning DJs got to be too lame. Miles passed like that.

  We were in the foothills, starting to climb up the 330, when I had to ask, “So…uh…what happened after I…y’know. Left. Last night.”

  After I ran away.

  Jason grimaced. “Not a whole lot. Lina’s dad scooped her up and got her inside. She gave me a pretty nasty look.”

  “She didn’t say anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay.”

  I felt like Jason’s “I told you so” was a cartoon anvil floating in the air above my head and I had just until the Merry Melodies music cue before the thing squashed me, accordion style.

  He didn’t say it. He drove, and made a little show of drumming along with the radio with his fingers on the steering wheel.

  So I said it.

  “You called it, huh?”

  “Hm?”

  “You told me I shouldn’t see her. You called it.”

  He coughed a laugh. “Well, duh, dude.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You let that guy get to you,” he said.

  “I guess.”

  He glanced at me quickly. “What, you’re still freaking out? You still think she, what, faked the whole thing?”

  That was crazy. “No! I mean, shit, there were witnesses and stuff. Everybody knows what happened.”

  “Then, dude, what’s your problem?” He looked fed up. “Why are you fucking this up?”

  I looked away from him. “I lost it.”

  “Fuckin’ A. I wish I’d never pushed you to go after that guy. If I’d known you were gonna fuckin’ whale on him like that…”

  “Dude, I didn’t even know! He pushed me!”

  “And you couldn’t just walk away?”

  “That’s pretty funny, coming from you.” Jason was well known for acting so batshit crazy, he’d been seen intimidating linebackers.

  He shook his head. “Different, dude. When’s the last time you remember me actually getting into a fight?”

  Well, fuck me.

  “I can’t remember.”

  “It was freshman year,” he said. “Norman Raley—remember him?”

  His whole family moved away after his mother killed herself right before our sophomore year.

  “Yep.”

  “That kid was so fucked up, he wouldn’t back down. I didn’t have a choice.” Jason frowned. “Still kicked his ass.” He didn’t look like he relished the memory.

  “I didn’t have a choice, either,” I said.

  He laughed again. “Oh, c’mon. Norman Raley jumped me and started throwing punches. That rockabilly faggot…all he did was, what, say you were worse than Car or some shit.” He looked at me sideways. “You totally had a choice, dude. Don’t even.”

  “That’s why I need to find my dad,” I mumbled.

  “You think you’re going crazy. Right.” Jason sighed. “Seriously?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just…more and more, I just get so…angry. And it’s like I can’t see straight. I can’t think. I just wanna…lash out.”

  I looked at my hands. My knuckles were bruised; they hurt, but that wouldn’t last much longer. I healed fast, another benefit from my share of dad’s augmented genes.

  “The way I am,” I said, “it’s not good. I could do…worse things than I did to Eric Finn.”

  Jason looked thoughtful. “Your dad—he totally smoked one of those dudes with his bare feet, right?”

  Ripped out an augmented PrenticeCambrian agent’s guts with his dirty toenails while the guy held him off the ground by his wrists, to be exact.

  “Yep.”

  I could still call up the way it had smelled.

  “So…fuck, dude, what if your dad’s worse now? What if he’s all-the-way nuts?”

  Worse, the memory of the smell didn’t seem nearly so bad as it used
to. Sometimes, I revisited the memory like it wasn’t even a full-on horror show.

  Sometimes, the memory of the smell of that guy’s blood and guts and raw shit falling out of his body made my mouth water a little.

  I shuddered.

  “If my dad’s all-the-way nuts,” I said, “then I’m fucked. I’ll do whatever my mom wants. I’ll go live with the fucking Sovereigns.”

  “With that Byron dude.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That guy was a pussy,” Jason said.

  I had to laugh. “You caught him at a bad time.”

  He laughed, too. “Fucker was up your ass since grade school, but he finds out he’s a Sovereign and it’s all, ‘Oh, Nate, let’s be friends, and hey, can you save me from the crazy mad-scientist guy?’" Jason snorted. “I don’t care what he can do. Dude’s a pussy.”

  I let it go. I wasn’t sure if Byron had done the right thing for himself. I just knew it wasn’t the right thing for me.

  I’d spent my whole life wishing I could be a normal kid. Just because I now knew there was no chance of that didn’t mean I wanted to throw in with people who insisted on being treated differently. That was nuts.

  We got to Kirby Lake, which is about a mile up in the mountains east of Los Angeles, around eight o’clock. There was snow on the curbs and street corners.

  “It’s gonna be cold out there.” I had my sweatshirt and a jacket, but for shoes I’d just thrown on my high top sneakers. They were canvas; I’d have to watch I didn’t get them wet.

  “Took forever to get up here,” Jason groused. “Which way to this guy’s house?”

  I told him, and he got us there, a woodsy street where the houses were nearly obscured by the trees around and between them.

  I didn’t see Denver’s van in his driveway. Just some old junky sportscar. I knew that couldn’t be his.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think he’s home.”

  “Oh.”

  I thought about it. “Hold on.”

  I got out of the car. It was even colder than I’d expected. Snow on the ground, a mile above sea level—I should be a weatherman.

  I knocked on the front door. I noticed a fence of painted wood between his house and the one to the right; it looked new and out of place. The big luxury car in the driveway next door looked new, too.

  I knew that my dad sometimes hung out at Denver’s in the colder months. I hoped the rich new neighbors hadn’t spooked him off.

  I knocked again.

  Nothing.

  There was no one home.

  Where would Denver Colorado go, first thing in the morning?

  I walked back to the car and got in.

  “He’s not home. Let’s hang out.”

  Jason huffed. “Dude, I can’t.”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  “No. It took, like, way longer to get up here than I thought it would. My parents are coming home today, remember? I have to get back before they do.” He blinked. “Fuck, I have to get back before they call to tell me they’re at the airport.”

  “When’s that?”

  “Like, eleven-thirty.”

  “Oh.”

  Given the morning traffic Jason would hit, that wasn’t a lot of time.

  “Nate. Dude,” he said. “You should just come back with me.”

  “Huh? No way!”

  “Look, man. We came up here; dude’s not home. It’s a sign. You should just…play it like your mom wants to.”

  I stared at him. “What’d you do with my friend?”

  He shook his head. “Seriously, dude. I mean…last night…all the trouble you’re already in…you said it yourself: this guy will probably call your mother as soon as he sees you anyway, right?”

  “But I’ll have—"

  “Just come home, Nate.”

  I didn’t need hypersenses to know that Jason was concerned about me. Worried, even. It warmed me.

  But to go back now, when Denver Colorado was probably just out buying donuts or something…worse, to have to face my mother when she figured out I had skipped out and come here, just like last time…to have to eat crow and put myself in her hands…

  No way.

  “I’ll have all that time,” I said, “from when he calls her until she gets here. I can, like, plead my case, or whatever.”

  He shook his head. “I gotta go.”

  “I gotta stay.”

  He looked exasperated. “Dude, I can’t just leave you up here!”

  I shook my head. “It’s cool, Jase. Seriously. You’ve gone above and beyond. Go.”

  He looked miserable. “I gotta.”

  “It’s cool.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “I’ll hang out. I’ll wait. Denver will show up; I’ll surprise him, piss him off, we’ll have a few laughs, shoot some hoops, whatever, my mom’ll come up, we’ll go to dinner…” I grinned at him. “It’ll be great.”

  “You should come with me.”

  Now I did clasp him on the shoulder. It was as awkward as I’d guessed, and I let go quickly. “Nope.” I got out of the car. “Thanks, dude. I owe you fifty billion favors.”

  “Fuckin’ right you do.” He looked up at Denver’s house, then back at me. “Be careful. You have change to call your mom, just in case your guy doesn’t come around?”

  I nodded. “I learned my lesson from yesterday.”

  That made him laugh, but there wasn’t much joy in it. “Like hell.”

  “Oh, hey, I get it. Nice one. Subtle.” I tapped the roof. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

  “All right. Late.”

  “Late.” I shut the passenger door. Jason pulled out and was lost from sight pretty quickly. The Bonneville’s exhaust made my nose run.

  Plus, it was fucking cold.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Fifteen

  I hung out at Denver’s for about twenty minutes. Whenever I heard a car coming, I turned my back on the road and acted like I had just knocked on the door. I didn’t want anyone to wonder why the funny-looking teenager was hanging around the crippled sculptor’s house, and hey, by the way, didn’t he look like that freaky Nate Charters from The Weekly World News?

  I started to think Denver wasn’t coming back any time soon.

  It was going to look kinda weird if any of those passing cars came back the other way and still saw me there.

  I sniffed, and my nostrils cleared for a breath or two. The air was cold across my sinuses.

  It carried a message, too.

  It was him.

  My father. He’d been here.

  I wanted to slap myself on the forehead. He’d been here. Right there, pretty much right where I’d been loitering.

  How long ago?

  I didn’t have a reliable frame of reference for my dad’s scent. It was like my own, in a way, but more pungent, riper. If I had a better idea of how much stronger, I might be able to guess how long ago he’d been there. As it was, though, I didn’t even want to guess. The olfactory messages were too vague, confusing.

  But he had been there.

  On a whim, I slipped around the left side of the house. I found Denver’s trashcans under an overhang of wooden planks coming off the roof.

  I glanced toward the street. Nothing. My ears didn’t detect any traffic. The few fir trees between the street and my position might obscure me, too.

  I took the metal lid off one of the trashcans. It was almost full inside, but right on top was a white trash bag, the right size for, like, a kitchen trashcan.

  I’d taken out the trash enough times to recognize the bag was the same brand that my mother bought. It seemed fresh; it was still a little puffy from captured air from when it had been tied shut.

  The FBI went through people’s trash to find counterfeiters and killers and stuff. Would I be able to learn anything from Denver Colorado’s trash?

  I really hated trash. Because of my sniffer.

  W
hatever. I untied the bag.

  Yep. Smelled like old garbage. I gagged and flinched automatically.

  The thing with my crazy senses, though, is that once I’ve experienced the, I don’t know, the big picture—the “mighty brush” version of things—if I concentrate a little, I can kind of separate things out. Sort of like putting each of the sounds, or in this case scents, in their own little boxes in my brain, so I could get past the really strong stuff and focus on sorting out the rest.

  I scrunched up my face, took a couple of big breaths through my mouth, and turned back to the trash.

  Bam.

  Ratty, filthy, shitty old clothes under some scraps that looked like the crap you scrape off your dinner plate. A flannel shirt. A pair of dark blue slacks, like what a workman (or Eric Finn, said a dark part of my brain) would wear. A torn-up, frayed cable-knit sweater.

  It all totally reeked of my dad.

  These were my dad’s clothes. Or, I guess, they had been.

  This was just like a cop show. I giggled a little, putting the “crime scene” together in my head. Andrew Charters had been here, recently, and when he left, he was either naked or dressed in new clothes…or at the very least, different clothes from the ones he’d had on when he arrived.

  That meant something.

  What?

  I deflated a little. Really, all it had to mean was that every now and then, Denver probably picked up some discards at the Goodwill or wherever, and my dad swapped them for the clothes he’d worn sleeping in the woods for the last however long.

  So this “evidence” told me my dad, wherever he was, didn’t look as homeless as he probably usually did.

  That didn’t really help me for shit.

  Fuck, but those clothes were filthy. I didn’t really want to touch them, but I felt like it would be stupid to not investigate a little more of the trash.

  I snuck back toward the front of the house and found a fallen branch about as long as my forearm. Perfect.

  I stripped the leaves off, which left a sappy, green smell on my hands that, given the circumstances, I could hardly mind. Back at the trashcan, I poked through the clothes and moved them to one side.

  Under the shirt was a semi-transparent plastic produce bag like you get at the grocery store. It was full of hair. Knotted, clumpy, long, salt-and-pepper hair.