by R J Johnson
Alex shook his head, “Who are you? I don’t even know who you are anymore…’
Ash stared at Alex, not saying a word.
“Ash, I want an explanation, and I want it now,” Alex said. “Otherwise we find out how long you can tread water.”
Ash leaned forward and Alex started to pull back, but was too slow. Ash grabbed the end of Alex’s gun barrel, pulling it close, “Kill me! DO IT!”
Alex struggled with the sudden weight of his friend. Ash was pulling so hard on the barrel that he nearly pulled the trigger on accident.
Ash nodded, his eyes wide and staring at Alex, “What do I have to go back to stateside anyway? You’d be doing me a favor!”
Alex was stunned. Why was his friend talking like this?
Then, Ash twisted his arm and suddenly, Alex felt himself being lifted up and pushed over the edge of the raft. Ash plunged his face into the cold seawater as he cried out in surprise and pain. He struggled against his friend’s powerful grip to resurface and replenish his lungs with the precious oxygen his brain badly needed.
Alex’s hands were flailing about searching for purchase, anything that he might grab in order to get his head back where he could breathe in the air his body badly needed.
Just as sudden as he’d found himself underwater, Alex was hauled out of the ocean. He gasped, desperate for air. He struggled against his friend’s leverage and retreated in panic.
Alex stared up at his friend in shock and defiance, he had nothing to say that sounded right. It didn’t matter what he’d done for Ash. If he became dead weight, his friend wouldn’t think twice about cutting his throat and leaving him behind.
Ash stared at Alex for a few moments before shucking out the pistol’s clip and removing the slide from the gun. He tossed the pieces out the boat, letting them sink into the murky depths below.
“You don’t understand…” Ash said softly. “You were a dead man walking if I didn’t get you out. Now, with this missing money, we’re all dead. We were supposed to bring back six billion to our patrons. One penny missing gets my sister killed.”
Alex’s eyes widened as he made the connection. “This was a setup all along. You knew…”
“I planned the whole damned thing,” Ash said crossly. “I had to. They kidnapped my sister and they were going to kill you. I asked the wrong person for a favor and it got out of control. I thought I could control the situation and I still can if you just trust me.”
“You lied to me…”
“I lied to protect you Alex!” Ash roared at him, whirling back to face him. “You really wanted to go back to living as a civilian? I’ve seen it in your eyes. Even if I did manage to save your life, what would you have to go back to?”
Alex sat back, dazed, attempting to absorb his new life. Just a few minutes before, he’d been trying to figure out the kind of island he was going to buy with his share. Now, Ash was telling him that there was no money. Not for him anyway.
“And you especially weren’t ready to face her…” Ash said softly, twisting the knife. “Isn’t that so? Do you really think Emily would’ve welcomed you back with open arms just because you had a few sheckles to show off?”
Alex looked up sharply at the mention of her name. Ash had always respected him enough to not bring her up, but for some reason, it meant more than ever hearing her name now.
Especially since he was right.
Ash shook his head, “I saved you Alex. In more than one way tonight. Not just from the people angling for this money, but from yourself too. You can’t go back. You left long ago. You and I both know that.”
Alex swallowed and let his friend’s words roll over him. How could he argue? Ash was right. If his time in the Army hadn’t satisfied Emily that he was actually doing something with his life, how would a few hundred million convince her? She wasn’t impressed with money. Besides, any woman attracted to his money wouldn’t be worth his time and Emily wasn’t like that. She was beyond money, power, and fame. She was pure.
And she would be better off without him in her life.
He watched his friend sit back down on the other side of the boat and take out a pair of binoculars. He began scanning the horizon while Alex stared at his friend who had apparently gone nuts.
“I’m in deep shit aren’t I?” Alex asked.
Ash didn’t say anything and just pulled a stick of beef jerky out of his pack and began chewing it absentmindedly. Alex looked up at the stars above them, feeling a sinking feeling. What had he done? What had he gotten himself into?
After a moment, he realized he already knew the answers to those questions. None of it mattered anymore. After choosing to hitch his wagon to Ash’s insane plan of stealing six billion dollars from the US Government, he was committed to whatever happened next, whether he liked it or not.
Which meant he needed to get back to the business of surviving. Ash didn’t seem optimistic about their chances, but, he trusted his friend to get them out of whatever pickle they were in. It wasn’t as if he had any other choice.
They bobbed along in the starlit waters of the Atlantic as he waited to see where his choices would take him next.
Chapter Seven
At first Scott flew out toward the center of the great Pacific Ocean, thinking of just taking the stone and leaving everything behind. But he wouldn’t ignore the promise he had made to himself once he felt the power of the stone flow through him.
In an instant, he saw everything he could do to avenge her death. He didn’t know if it was the stone that had given him that vision, or if it was his own selfish impulses. Whatever it was, he had a chance now to make things right. After being in so much pain for so long, and not knowing what had happened to her, he needed to take the chance. He owed her that much.
Even if it killed him.
By the time dawn was peeking over the eastern foothills, Scott was back in Los Angeles, flying high above Pasadena where his apartment was located.
His dragon form would be too intimidating for anyone who happened to be awake, so if he wanted to get around the area without causing a panic, Scott decided he needed to start looking a bit more inconspicuous. He tried shifting into an eagle, but found himself unable to create a proper mental image. After a few moments, Scott sighed and settled on the parrot Alex had turned him into earlier at San Ellijo. He already knew what that was like.
He floated down, close to his apartment, landing a few blocks away, in the hills above Los Angeles and shifted back into his human form. He even thought about some clothing like Alex had in the Hypertruck earlier. Feeling them take shape around him was… disconcerting to say the least.
Glancing down, he saw cargo shorts and a t-shirt with a screen print of a robot destroying a city looking as if he’d just taken them off the rack.
“Neat…” he said, running his fingers over the cloth. It felt real enough.
He opened his fist and took his first good look at the stone he’d (borrowed was the term he wanted to use, but he knew better) stolen from Alex. He looked at the curved stone sitting innocently in his palm.
Scott inhaled the night air and felt the stone’s power flow through him as he flexed. The tiny voice that insisted he take the stone was growing ever louder.
This is your chance to right those wrongs…
Scott screwed his eyes shut, forcing himself to think about what he was doing.
It wasn’t too late. He could still go back to Alex, apologize and return the stone to him.
But then you’ll never get your revenge… the voice replied.
Is that really something he even wanted anymore? It was so long ago. No matter what he did now, Molly would still be dead. And that couldn’t be fixed - no matter what kind of magic Scott had. Even Alex’s healing stone hadn’t been able to bring back people from the dead. At least, that’s what his best friend had told him about his own attempts with the stone.
But this was more than just petty revenge. This was about keeping corporations and g
overnments from exploiting people like him and the people he care about. This was about making sure technology like his Hypertruck’s camouflage program stayed away from those who would use it to do more harm than good.
This was about finding out what had really happened to her.
He gazed out over the Los Angeles basin, each tiny twinkling orange, white, and blue light signifying someone’s very own life drama playing out in an uncaring world. He breathed in the fog settling in during the grey dawn and for the first time in a long time, thought about the day he had met Molly Madison.
After Alex had told him he’d signed up for the army and was about to leave Stanford behind, Scott had been surprised, but supportive. After all, he had his own life to deal with. A full scholarship to MIT was waiting for him in Massachusetts and he wasn’t about to pass up on that opportunity.
Besides, Alex’s breakup with Emily had made his friendship with her somewhat awkward. He loved Emily, knowing she helped put Alex on an even keel. Without them together, Scott didn’t know what else they would talk about.
Besides, he had bigger fish to fry. His first week at MIT had been filled with action, and he’d been constantly on the move. As part of an intensive graduate program, he wasn’t able to come up for air all that often.
He noticed her immediately of course. In a program that boasted a 15 to 1 male to female ratio, anyone with breasts was bound to be noticed.
She was the type of girl who’d grown up with her nose in a book, completely unaware of just how beautiful she was. Her chestnut brown hair (always up and wrapped into an elaborate ponytail) bounced to and fro as she ran from class to class in front of him every day.
Scott had wanted what Alex had with Emily for a long time, but never figured out just how to start that first crucial conversation with a woman. He’d discovered a natural well of charisma in college, but that only lasted for so long. Eventually, the parties where he met women gave way to studying and with his studies taking priority, women pretty much disappeared from his radar. He figured if someone pretty was talking to him, they either wanted something from him, thought he was gay, or was just not attracted to him. And for the most part, he’d been right.
But he was tired of being alone. He wanted someone to watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report with at the end of his long day. He wanted someone to eat with him in the commissary for once. But most of all, he just wanted to feel like someone cared about him again.
So it was with some trepidation that he approached the beautiful young engineering student as she stood outside the Engineering building, looking confused.
Pushing aside the small voice inside his head that said no woman ever saw him as attractive, he approached her, seeing his chance.
“Hello fair maiden, what pray tell has befallen you? May I assist you in your quest?” he immediately felt his stomach sink. What the hell? Was he really doing his Renaissance voice?
But to his surprise, she didn’t roll her eyes, or snort derisively. Instead, her face brightened, as she recognized a kindred spirit.
“Hello good sir, might you have a key to this dungeon? My quest has taken me here and I’m unable to complete it without garnering the signature of my professor’s TA.”
Scott felt his heart leap back into his chest when he saw her smile. Good Lord, he’d do anything to see that every day.
Including continuing the ill-advised renaissance bit he’d started.
“Fair maiden, I believe the strange markings on this door tells us weary travelers that the operator of this fine establishment shall be with us in a few short minutes.”
She smiled, but didn’t respond, looking back at the piece of paper on the door. He swallowed and wondered if he should press his luck.
“My name is Scott,” he said, extending his hand out to her, “I’m sorry, I know we’ve seen each other around, but I haven’t caught your name.”
She shyly smiled and extended a hand to him, “My name is Molly. Molly Madison.”
He felt the warmth of her smile spread through his body.
They had their first date at a fast food joint near campus. Scott didn’t have much money to spend, and fortunately, Molly didn’t seem to care. She genuinely seemed to enjoy his company.
It wasn’t long before they began sharing a room together on campus. It was only when he showed Molly a project he was working on that he really began to understand he was in love with her. She was everything he wasn’t. And he was everything she never knew she needed.
Together, they were invincible. For so long, he had Alex as his confidant, and after losing his best friend, Scott had felt lost. But Molly brightened his days back up. It was only through her strength that he’d been able to get through Alex’s “death” and subsequent funeral.
He’d always known she was smarter than him, but when they began working together on the camouflage program was when he handed over all sense of academic superiority to her. Molly was the best mind in their graduate program, which placed her high in the running for being one of the best in the world.
It was her brilliance that attracted the venture capitalists to their tiny Cambridge apartment. JT Halprin was one of the biggest fish they had who was looking for new projects to invest in and it was Molly’s reputation that had brought him to them.
“Ten million over three years,” Halprin had offered them. “Show me what you’re capable of and we’ll take what you create to market.”
And they had signed on the dotted line – a bit too eagerly as they’d come to find out.
At first, the work was both challenging and rewarding. But, soon, Scott discovered structural problems within their laboratory was making it difficult for them to do their work properly.
But it was the worst day of his life that had brought him to steal from his best friend.
She had demurred on the camouflage project several times. Scott even wondered occasionally if she was hiding something from him. It wasn’t like her to be so thoroughly stumped. But, night after night, they worked on the camouflage program while Scott built the first prototype of the Hypertruck. It had been the proudest moment of his life when he turned it on for the first time.
They had celebrated with champagne. Even Halprin appeared somewhat interested in the vehicle that would ultimately use the camouflage software. But, even with Scott’s victory, it didn’t do much to assuage Halprin’s demands that they work faster.
The worst day of his life had started out normally enough. His routine had been to arrive at the lab promptly at eight am every morning. The previous night, Molly had remained behind to crack a problem with the hardware they used to camouflage the Hypertruck. She’d e-mailed him around 1am with a copy of her program and a message saying she was going to stay on the couch at the lab for the night.
Instead of sleeping as she’d instructed him to, Scott had turned his attention to the program, attempting to figure out where they had gone wrong. After several cups of coffee, Scott discovered several errors had added up into a complex programming problem, but once he licked it, he sent the file to Molly who had remained behind at the lab.
After a shower, shave and a change of clothes, he decided to join Molly with a plan to take them out for breakfast and celebrate humanity’s latest technological leap forward.
But, as he pulled off the freeway, heading into the office park where their laboratory was located, Scott began to get a very bad feeling. Dozens of fire trucks and police cars lined the streets leading to their lab.
Blocked from going any further, Scott got out of his truck and began running for the lab, feeling the heat from the flames from a block away.
He arrived at the parking lot, and saw half the office building lying in ruins. Something had gone terribly wrong.
The firefighters later told him that Molly hadn’t stood a chance. The secured lockers where they stored their hazardous gas equipment had been improperly stored and that had started a fire in the lab. It’d spread too quickly to be contained, leavin
g nothing behind.
The pain he felt watching the lab burn where the love of his life spent her last night was unlike any pain he’d ever known. Even seeing his best friend’s casket hadn’t provoked the kind of desperate despair he felt over the next few weeks.
He knew Halprin had something to do with Molly’s death. Molly hadn’t ever liked the man, thinking he was everything wrong with their country. Scott agreed with her in principle, but knew they weren’t going to do much science if all the money they had to work with was in their savings accounts.
After the disaster, Halprin had remained insistent that he deliver the camouflage software. He was still under contract, Halprin said loudly. He threatened lawyers and breach of contract, and lots of other very scary sounding words to Scott.
But, he’d become obsessed with Molly’s death. He couldn’t think of anything else. He knew he stored his chemicals perfectly, and Molly had been just as OCD about proper storage as he had.
Whatever accident that had occurred had not been a result of their incompetence. Scott knew there had to be something more.
Unfortunately, he needed proof, and the only way he was going to get some of that was by hacking into Halprin’s servers and accessing the video footage of their lab from that night.
That’s when he made the second biggest mistake of his life.
After barely avoiding jail for trying to break into Auburn Industries, Scott was left penniless and facing a long prison sentence. The billionaire declined to press charges so long as Scott delivered the camouflage software he had worked on with Molly.
Halprin even included a letter from the Department of Defense saying that the software was a clear and present danger to the United States and intended to seize the program and throw him in prison if he did not hand it over.
Scott had agreed, but with the caveat that he be the only one allowed to install the software and work on the project. Being able to steal the Hypertruck from the DoD and Halprin had been particularly satisfying the other day, but now, with his new power to shapeshift into anything he wanted, he knew he could finally exact his revenge on Halprin for Molly’s death.
