CHAPTER 28
“Logan?” Seb said as he came face to face with his dad’s old best friend. Good job he had the ability to slow down time. Had he not been viewing events through his slow motion lens, he would have swung first and asked questions later. Even with his abilities, he only just managed to hold back.
In the face of his dad’s friend’s kind and calm assessment, Seb said, “What are you doing here?”
At first, Logan shrugged. He opened his mouth several times as if to speak and then must have thought better of it. A few more seconds passed before he finally said, “I was just checking the place out.”
A snort of a laugh—a loud burst of noise in the quiet house—Seb then said, “What, you were just passing? Come on, I find that a little hard to believe. The desert is the kind of place you come to kill yourself, not somewhere you go for a scenic drive.”
“I’ve been checking on the place when I can. I think your dad would have wanted me to. I want to make sure it hasn’t been robbed or taken over by squatters. When I saw smoke …”
Seb looked through the living room’s door at the glowing fire. He shrugged. “That makes sense.”
As he looked Seb up and down, Logan said, “So what have you been up to, boy?”
Older and wiser than he’d been when he’d last seen Logan, Seb tensed at being called boy, but he let it slide. Very few people could call him that. In fact, with his dad gone, probably just one person could call him that and get away with it.
CHAPTER 29
The fire popped and crackled. Seb had put more logs on a few hours previously. The flames had now sunk into the glowing embers that had been there when Logan arrived. It served as the only measure of how long they’d talked for because there were no clocks in the room.
It made sense to tell Logan everything. Well, nearly everything. Seb had told him about the Shadow Order, about SA—he’d told him a lot about SA, his infatuation with her not missed by Logan. He’d spoken about the war with the Crimson Countess and how they’d lost Gurt. He’d also told him about Moses and what he’d probably face if he ever returned to the Shadow Order’s base. However, he hadn’t told Logan about the voice of his mother in his head, and he hadn’t told him about the prophecy. As kind as Logan was, believing such crazy nonsense would be a stretch too far even for his generous heart.
For the entire time Seb had spoken to him for, Logan sat back on the sofa next to Seb’s ratty, old cape and listened. He laughed when Seb told him what he’d paid for the garment.
“You’re doing the right thing, boy,” Logan said. “You’ve grown up so much since you left. Your dad would be proud.”
The statement sideswiped Seb, his grief springing on him without warning. It took a few seconds for him to gulp it back down and say, “But I fight a lot more.”
“You’re fighting for the right reasons. He’d see that.”
Seb stood up and walked over to the nearest window. While peering out into the dusty Danu desert, searching for signs of Moses’ bounty hunter, he said, “I need to go and see Davey.”
The slight smile both on Logan’s lips and in his eyes vanished. His tone turned sombre. “Are you sure?”
A deep inhale of the smokey air, the charred taste of it catching in his throat, Seb nodded. “I haven’t seen him for years. Can you get me visitation rights on the quiet? I’m sure I could do it officially, but that’ll leave a trail for Moses to find.”
For the next few seconds, the only sound came from the wind outside and the fire as it popped and fizzed.
Logan finally nodded. “Yep, I can do it. I shouldn’t, but I will. I don’t see much harm in it. You’re only visiting your brother, right?”
“Right.” Seb then said, “Oh, and Davey’s always said he doesn’t want visitors.”
The smile returned to Logan’s kind face. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll sort it out.”
CHAPTER 30
It only took a few hours for Logan to arrange Seb’s prison visit, and another hour for them to get there. The amount of service he’d given Danu’s police force had to have some advantages. The old frant had certainly been chewed up and spat back out again by the job. They owed him a favour or two.
The plastic chair had no padding and Seb wriggled as he sat on it, trying to find comfort where he wouldn’t be able to. The awkward twist emanated from his core, and no amount of shuffling would relieve it. He sat at a booth, wooden panels on either side of him and reinforced glass in front. A phone hung in a receiver, and a chair like the one he perched on sat empty on the other side of the glass. No doubt the ones on that side had been bolted to the floor. Who knew what the prisoners would do with a weapon like that?
Booths similar to the one Seb sat in ran away from him in both directions. Many of the beings on Seb’s side had phones to their ears and were talking to their loved ones opposite them. How many years had their relationship had a glass barrier between it? How many more did they have left?
A strong smell of bleach hung in the air. Typical government facility, they’d sterilised the personality out of the place. Unfortunately for Seb, the bleach hadn’t been applied thickly enough to mask the smell of what must have been a child’s full nappy. No children in there at that moment, the small beast must have left the stench as a parting gift to whoever came in after them. Or maybe an infantile screw you to the jailers.
Every time the door on the other side of the glass opened, Seb looked up. Six guards by it, two mandulus, two frants, and he didn’t know what the other two were. They all held semi-automatic blasters, wore deep frowns, and barely blinked as they watched the prisoners for signs of trouble. They looked like they’d be glad of an excuse to exert their will.
So far, the door had let through seven or eight prisoners. Each time Seb’s stomach had turned a backflip in anticipation. But none of them were Davey. It had been years since he’d seen him. Would he even recognise him now?
An occasional look over his shoulder at the door he’d entered through, Seb could still feel the attention of something. Maybe Moses’ bounty hunter had caught up with him. Hopefully they’d left Logan alone if they had. Not that he needed to worry about him. The old cop could look after himself. He’d opted to wait in the car outside. He had Buster’s satellite phone with him. There would have been no way the prison would have let the device in. Although harmless, the large case could have contained anything. Seb couldn’t afford to leave it unattended.
When the door leading to the prison clicked again, Seb saw the next person enter and the air left his lungs. He whispered, “Davey?”
Heavy bags beneath his sunken eyes, Davey fixed his dark stare on Seb and strode over to the booth.
Seb physically recoiled from his big brother’s approach.
The years in prison looked to have put decades on him. It had turned him into a jaded version of their father.
When Davey sat down, he stared at Seb with no change of expression and picked up the phone on his side.
Seb did the same and then pressed his palm against the cold glass separating them. He listened to his brother’s heavy breaths. A cheap phone, the quality left a lot to be desired. For a few seconds he could do no more than stare back at his brother. How had he turned into their father so quickly?
Finally, Seb said, “You look like shit, Davey.”
The stern expression broke and Davey smiled, his once boyish face now a mess of wrinkles. His teeth had turned brown and he wore a thick stubble. He looked like he’d been sleeping rough for all the time he’d been locked up. His voice rumbled through the receiver’s speaker. “Thanks, little bro. I love you too.”
The flash of humanity that ran through his brother’s withered face helped Seb relax a little and he shrugged. “You know me.”
“I used to.”
The words cut to Seb’s heart, his resentment spilling out. “You were the one who kept rejecting my requests to visit.”
A lazy roll of his eyes, Davey said, “I didn’t even ge
t a request this time. More a summons.”
Seb didn’t reply to that. Logan probably wouldn’t get in trouble for arranging a visit, but best to keep it close to his chest anyway.
After a weary sigh, Davey said, “So Dad’s gone.”
It disarmed Seb. The prison, Davey’s resemblance to their father, the prophecy, his mother’s voice. Tears itched his eyes and the haggard version of a brother he once knew blurred.
“Come on, bro,” Davey said. “It’s okay. He had enough time to tell us how much of a disappointment we were. He’ll be happy in heaven, or hell, or wherever he’s ended up.”
“Probably being a pain in someone’s arse somewhere,” Seb said with a smile.
Davey smiled back. “Wherever he is, I bet he’s making sure they have two of everything in the cupboards!”
Seb and Davey laughed before the mood fell again. Davey looked straight into Seb’s eyes. “He used to visit, you know?”
“He did?”
“Yeah. Every week without fail.”
While shaking his head, Seb frowned at his brother. “Why didn’t he tell me?”
“I asked him not to. I didn’t want you coming here. If you knew he visited, you’d insist on doing the same. If you found out, I would have cut off his visits too, and I didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want me to do that.”
“So he kept your secret.”
“Yeah.”
“Dad wouldn’t ever speak about you. And when he did, it was like you were dead to him.”
“He had to do that to cover the lie. He asked me every week if he could tell you he came, but I didn’t want you seeing me like this. I asked a lot of him, and he bore the burden of your resentment. It’s me you should be angry with, not him.”
The stinging sensation returned to Seb’s eyeballs and his bottom lip buckled. Although he drew a deep breath, it did little to subdue his grief. “I felt like I hated him a lot of the time.”
“And that killed him. I didn’t want to see you, not even when summoned today, but I thought it was important you knew it wasn’t his call.”
So much to catch up on, but in the next few days Buster’s phone would ring and Seb would be gone again. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here,” Seb said. “I want to come and see you regularly like Dad did. We have a lot to talk about.”
But Davey shook his head. “Prison’s not fun. Especially for a cop killer. They hardly roll out the red carpet for you. If I ever do get out of here, it’ll be when I’m old and frail. It’ll probably be when I’ve lost my marbles and control of my bowels. They’ll free me because they won’t want to wipe my arse for me anymore. I’ll die in a gutter somewhere because I probably won’t even know my own name. They would have taken their pound of flesh and then some by that time, so why waste the resources on me?”
At that moment, the voice of his mother came to Seb. Be strong. He drew a breath to tell Davey what he’d learned about the prophecy, but Davey cut him off.
“I am glad you came.”
“You are?”
“Yeah, I know I just made a fuss about it, but I wanted to see my last remaining relative one final time. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. I didn’t know if you’d ever try to come here again, but I felt like I owed it to you to be here if you did. I owed it to Dad and your memory of him. I would have waited for however long it took to make sure you knew the truth.”
The lump in Seb’s throat burned and he laughed through it. “Even if that meant shitting yourself in a gutter as an OAP?”
Davey smiled.
“You’re my brother,” Seb then said, “of course I would try again.” Then the words caught up with him. “What do you mean, one last time?”
Instead of answering him, Davey replaced the phone on his side of the glass. A heavy click popped in Seb’s ear from where the line got cut off.
Seb kept his hand pressed against the cold and clear barrier between them, a gesture his brother hadn’t returned. He pressed the glass as if he could push through it.
“I love you, little brother,” Davey called back over his shoulder as he stood up and walked away. “Get the hell away from this place and find a better life. Danu’s the armpit of the galaxy. It has nothing to offer.”
“Davey …” Seb’s words died as he watched Davey run full tilt at the group of guards on his side of the glass. He pulled a shiv from out of the back of his trousers and he looked ready to use it. Before he’d made it to the first guard, three of them raised their blasters and let rip. The red laser fire hit Davey in several places, sending his arms kicking away from him. One shot ran through his face and dragged a spray of blood out the back of his head. Some of the spray hit the glass in front of Seb and he flinched away from it as if it might cover him.
Seb would have shouted if he’d had it in him. Instead, he remained frozen to the spot while the guards on the other side of the glass crowded around Davey’s dead body, their weapons pointing down at him just in case they’d misjudged his current state.
You need to get out of there, Seb. If you stay, they’ll question you, and Moses will see your name pop up on a system somewhere. Get out now.
Were he not in a room full of people, Seb might have replied to his mum’s voice. Instead, he pushed off the desk to help him stand up. He felt drunk as he walked out of the room, his legs weak, his vision blurred.
The only thing keeping Seb going as he stumbled out of there was the voice of his mother. I love you, Seb. You have a new family around you now. Be with them and fulfil your potential.
CHAPTER 31
“He said he let Dad visit, but he wouldn’t ever let me,” Seb said as Logan drove them back to his dad’s house. The car bounced with the undulations in Danu’s barren wasteland. The small cushion of air it rode on did little to make the ride any smoother than if they’d had wheels. In fact, it would have coped better with wheels. It seemed that whenever Logan’s old police car passed over a particularly nasty bump, it would bob for the next quarter of a mile.
Logan kept his attention through the front windscreen. The sun had started to set on the horizon, a red glow slowly taking over the sky. “What would you have had him do?”
“I think he should have told me. It’s the right thing to do. He should have let me make the choice about what was good for me.”
“Like you’ve done with your Shadow Order friends?”
Seb looked at the older man and ground his jaw. Rage and despair ran through him in equal measure after what he’d just witnessed. His voice cracked when he said, “That’s different.”
“How? You think you know better than them? That you know what’s good for them, but others don’t know what’s good for you?”
Another look at his dad’s oldest friend, the tall frant still frowned as he stared ahead. He sat hunched over the steering wheel. Something about his demeanour didn’t ring true. “You knew,” Seb said. He pointed at the older being. “You knew about Dad’s visits.”
“Of course I did.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because he didn’t want me to.”
To stop the vicious torrent rushing from his mouth, Seb paused and looked out of the window next to him at the sandy landscape. His pulse raced while he watched the barren wasteland fly past. The sun might have hung much lower in the sky, but it still shone bright and he had to squint against its glare. But he couldn’t be angry with Logan. The old creature hadn’t done anything wrong. In a much quieter voice than before, he said, “I’ve not got anyone left, Logan.”
The old man reached across with his large left hand and squeezed Seb’s shoulder. He looked at him for the first time since they’d been in the car. “You’ve got your friends still. They sound like they love you.” A snort of a laugh, he added, “Although I don’t know why.”
Despite the gravity of what had happened, Seb smiled.
“Sometimes we make what we think are the best decisions,” Logan said. “From what I’ve seen, they r
arely are. Maybe we’re trying to protect those we love, but maybe we’re trying to protect ourselves. Maybe Davey hurt too much to then see his sadness staring back at him through his brother’s eyes. Maybe you need to put yourself in his shoes and allow him that one freedom he had left, the freedom of making a choice about who came to visit him.”
Seb’s bottom lip buckled. “The first thing I said to him was that he looked old. Of all the things, I told him he looked like shit.”
Logan didn’t reply.
Before he could think twice about it, Seb said, “I think I hear Mum’s voice.”
The hum of the car filled the silence between them as Logan turned to look at Seb again.
“Since I’ve broken out of the Shadow Order’s base, I’ve started hearing the voice of a woman in my head. I think it’s Mum.”
Logan said nothing.
“You think I’m crazy?”
“No.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you hear a voice in your head.”
Another deep inhale, Seb then forced the words out. “I’ve been told I’m the chosen one, Logan. Many times. That I have the blood of someone great in me. I think it’s Mum’s blood. I think that’s why she’s talking to me now. I think she’s guiding me to wherever it is I need to go.”
The sound of air rushed over the hover car. When Seb looked at Logan, he saw a frown on his long face and said, “You know something, don’t you?”
Before Logan could reply, something came crashing from the sky on Seb’s left. He looked through the window to watch a large blur slam down against the dusty plains beside them.
The car snaked from the shockwave and Logan fought to pull it under control.
The dust settled to reveal a mech. Easily ten metres tall, it stood in the low sun, the light bouncing off its chrome body. It had no markings to show where it had come from. It didn’t need any. “Stop the car,” Seb said.
Fugitive: A Space Opera: Book Five of The Shadow Order Page 11
