Ivy

by William Dickstein

  “Everything alright?” Khard asked.

  “Everything is fine,” Lochlan replied.

  “Are you certain? Nothing on your mind you need to talk about?” Khard sounded sincere, as if he weren’t simply asking to be polite, and Lochlan felt the urge to be straight with the man. Lochlan was ready to just ask the older Agent the simple questions that were burning in his mind and, in that moment, beginning to burn within his neck as well.

  Before he could, the car stopped.

  “Ah, we’re here,” Khard said.

  GHS housing is awesome. Not the houses themselves—they’re usually a little cramped, and a lot of the time teams have to double up in the rooms—but living in a house paid for by the Global Heroes Society is truly the high life. The GHS has multiple contracts, separated by region, for contractors to provide all kinds of services to Capes that live in GHS housing. Meals are delivered each day with fresh fruits and vegetables, people come by twice a week to clean, and others come by daily to do the dishes, take out the trash, and maintain the yard or lawn if there is one. GHS housing is almost nothing like the places I grew up in, in spite of it being the World Government that pays for both. The self-making beds at the academy were only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the perks Capes enjoy.

  Lochlan and Khard pulled up to the house that O-Rell once stayed in with his team, a quaint single story at the edge of the first housing development behind Main Street. The Agents walked up and knocked on the door, a hollow, echoing sound that caused the door to shake on its old hinges. Gil came to answer immediately, dressed in his Cape clothes—tight, standard-issue red and black bodysuit with inlaid fiberglass. Gil had a cape he’d sewn on himself, the top of which shot straight up and curved around the back of his head before coming to the middle of his skull with the bottom of the cape hanging just above the ground. Modifications like that aren’t strictly against the rules for Capes, though actually wearing a cape is heavily discouraged by headquarters. They get caught in everything.

  “Agents, welcome,” Gil said, using the same overly formal tone he had before. “Please, do come in.”

  Stepping inside, Lochlan noticed the small layer of dust that had settled all around the little house, and he pretended to accidentally shuffle his feet as he finished walking in. There wasn’t so much dust on the floor that he could see it be cleared away, but it made an audible noise whenever one of his feet shuffled rather than stepped. The dust was everywhere, the filter in his throat activating automatically to catch the tiny particles before they entered his lungs.

  “What’s with all the dirt?” Khard asked. “Cleaners don’t come by?”

  “They do,” Gil replied, leading the two Agents into the kitchen. “They’ll be by a little later, actually. I’m so sorry for the dust; it’s my fault, really. Part of being an Elementalist–dirt tends to follow me around, even when I don’t want it to.”

  “Is it always this bad?” Lochlan asked.

  “Only when I’m particularly timorous, I’m afraid. It’s been quite the ordeal the last few days–first with the mission, and now with O-Rell gone missing. I’m so sorry,” Gil said, grabbing glasses from the cupboard, “would either of you like something to drink? It’s quite hot outside, I know.”

  “Nothing for me, thanks,” Lochlan replied.

  “I’m fine as well.” Said Khard.

  “Very well,” Gil continued, taking a seat on a barstool opposite to the stools Lochlan and Khard had sat down on, a tiled breakfast nook between the men. “Anyway, please do excuse the dust. With everything that’s happened since the last mission, it seems the stress is beginning to eat away at my mental fortitude a bit.”

  “Gil,” Khard started again. “Please, tell us everything you can about your team’s last mission. We have been given very few details thus far.”

  Lochlan looked at Gil as Khard issued his request, also noting that Gil grew somewhat agitated. While Lochlan could understand Gil’s reaction, he found it weird that Gil would be uncomfortable. After all, this was the very thing he was aware the Agents were coming to speak with him about.

  “Alright,” Gil said, clearing his throat. “Sure. Well, the call came in as most of them do, on all of our communicators. It was O-Rell who answered first. He’s like that, very quick with answering when headquarters calls. The three of us suited up, and O-Rell filled Frikshen and me in on our way there. O-Rell told us we were being sent to the Warehouse District, as there were reports of strange noises. We had gotten calls like that before, you understand. Normally it’s some loose dogs, maybe a couple of fat raccoons. People here love to feed the animals. We heard the…” Gil’s speech trailed off a little, his breath suddenly held, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them, Lochlan and Khard could see tears, though they looked stuck. Gil pulled his head back and the tears remained floating in the air, a quick swipe of Gil’s hand pulling them from the air as he took a deep breath. “Sorry,” Gil continued through sniffles. “We heard the, ah, noises when we were close to the warehouses, and… and…”

  “And it wasn’t any fat raccoons,” Frikshen said, walking into the kitchen. She took a seat next to Gil and began to pick up where the man had left off, apparently understanding that the Elementalist was in no shape to speak clearly. Frikshen is bulky for a woman, broad-shouldered with a strong chin. Her high cheekbones give her a very long face.

  Gil began to pull his head to the side again, more tears hanging in the air. He grabbed them with his hand and wiped it on the breakfast nook, a streak of mud appearing as he did so. Frikshen put her hand on Gil’s upper back, leaning into a hug to speak softly into his ear. “It’s alright, Gil. I’ll talk with them. You go try to calm down outside.”

  Gil got up, and Frikshen continued, “So, we could hear something strange right off, the moment we got out of the car. O-Rell had me take the point position, and I put on a fresh coat. Er, I covered myself in callouses, right, that’s just what I call it. The closer we got, the more I thought it sounded like somebody was grinding some metal inside. It wouldn’t have been too irregular of a noise if any of the buildings in that area’d had any tenants for the last five years. There are at least three blocks that are empty of anybody except the occasional squatter or tramp. Shouldn’t have been anybody there doing any kind of work, and we knew it.

  “I had looked back at O-Rell, and he signaled to me that he was ready. Gil already had a boulder floating to his left and a ball of fire in his right fist. So I went in, right, just straight through this door on the side. I didn’t bother to check if it was locked, since I didn’t want anyone standing nearby to see the handle move, didn’t want to have to write in my report that we’d given up the element of surprise. The door didn’t swing open as much as explode inward. Gil explained it to me when we got back, but the pressure inside the building had worked itself up to be good and high, and the air behind us managed to flow in just the right direction that when I pushed the door in, there was a vacuum effect. I watched the wood fly in and crash into the machine we’d heard grinding on metal. The door was so cheap, it freaking exploded. But there I went right in behind it. I got a real good look at the big machine in the middle of the room—it was a lot like the inside of one of those little printers people keep on their desk. Then two metal fists struck both sides of my head. They hit me in either temple, and I’d have probably been dead if not for having a coat on. Uh, of callouses. Still, it gave me a bit of a start, and my vision blurred a little from the vibration, but then I could see what we’d walked into. A whole warehouse full of robots. Somebody had been printing a whole bunch of them, and I mean there were a lot of robots in there. It was another heartbeat before Gil’s boulder came flying in to knock back a robot to my left. He threw the fireball too, but it didn’t do much, I don’t think. I turned quickly to start at the robot on my right.”

  “What did the robots look like?” Khard asked.

  “Standard humanoid build, I guess. Two arms and legs, and they stood up straight,” Fr
ikshen replied.

  “No distinguishing characteristics? No logo, or branding of any kind you could see?”

  “Actually, they all had this little circle on their shoulder with two dots. Sort of like a yin and yang, but not black and white, just kind of embossed on there.”

  “I see. Please, continue.”

  “Well, from there, the three of us did our best to follow, you know, our training. Stay in formation and all of that. We were nearly overrun, though. There were just so many bodies. I managed to keep track of Gil and O-Rell by watching where the robots were congregating. But I got to be so busy swinging my fists to keep the things off of me that I couldn’t really see how my team was doing. Gil opened up the ground underneath the building’s foundation once or twice and swallowed a few dozen robots each time, and I caught brief glimpses of him when he did that. The wind inside there got pretty crazy, too–I think he was using it to keep the robots from touching him. Gil was the only one I actually saw during the whole thing.”

  “So you never caught a glimpse of O-Rell?” Lochlan questioned.

  “Not once. All I could do was work on my pile, essentially, until it became clear we were done. And once the robots were all broken, it was only Gil and me in the warehouse. O-Rell had vanished, no blood or anything. Gil and I looked for him, too, very thoroughly. O-Rell’s gene isn’t as strong as a lot of other Capes’, but he can still tear up some cheap printer metal. He’s not weak at all. I was… I was so sure he was holding his own.” Frikshen’s eyes started to water, the guilt of misplacing O-Rell openly weighing on her and making muddy tears run down her dirty skin. “Ah, I’m sorry. Gil and I are both pretty broken up about it.”

  Gil came back in then and sat again at the same stool, taking a deep breath to speak as he sat. “I saw O-Rell during the fighting. Frikshen’s assumption was right, he was holding his own just fine. I threw two boulders to help him out, but otherwise he wasn’t having any problems. There came a point, though, where even with my wind barrier sweeping from side to side, I was overrun. It happened twice, actually, as I think I heard Frikshen mention. Each time I opened up the ground, it was to clear the robots from completely piling on top of me. After the second time, which was very close to the end of the fight, I lost sight of O-Rell, and did not see him again. We called his communicator multiple times before notifying headquarters.”

  “Well, I have some news that may help to alleviate some of your fears,” Khard said. “It seems like you’re both worried about what happened to O-Rell.” Khard reached into his bag to take out the manila folder, then placed it open on the nook. He slid it across the sandy counter with the picture of O-Rell on top. “This picture was taken after your mission. As you can see, O-Rell made it out of the warehouse.”

  “He doesn’t…” Gil began.

  “What the hell happened to him?” Frikshen finished. “He looks completely different! I don’t understand.”

  “Truthfully, neither do we,” Khard replied. “Right now, we’re still trying to put as many of the pieces together as possible. Our priority is locating O-Rell.”

  “He looks like he was running from someone,” Gil said. “He looks scared.”

  “We’re going to figure out what happened,” Lochlan said. “Is there anything more you two can tell us? What happened after you called headquarters?”

  “We came back here,” Frikshen said. “We’ve been waiting inside since then.”

  “Well,” said Khard, “thank you for taking the time to speak with us. We’ll be in touch if we have any questions we think you can answer.”

  “Wait,” Gil said. “Where are you going? Shouldn’t we come with you? We can help. This is our town.”

  “Believe me,” Khard said, his voice through a filter to make him sound sincere, as well as reassuring, “You’ve already been a tremendous help. The best thing for you both to do is remain here, in case O-Rell comes back. And if he does, call us immediately. Headquarters has already sent the information to your communicators.”

  Frikshen looked like she wanted to protest, but the Agents got up from their stools quickly, their movements accidentally synchronized. Neither Lochlan nor Khard looked back as they walked out the door, completely oblivious to the fresh tears on Frikshen’s face, which matched the tears floating in front of Gil’s face.

  Tell this next part slowly, please. For some of us, it is our favorite.

  Sure.

  Lochlan and Khard made their way to the Halley’s without delay, their car automatically rerouting around what little traffic there might have been in town. Lochlan used the time to take in more of the sights that Choudrant had to offer–the mid-size outlet mall and the small movie theater, which he could see from their vantage point on the highway. The theater was in Old Ruston, which had originally been a slightly larger town located outside of Choudrant, though the two areas had merged some time ago. The Agents hadn’t yet spoken since leaving Gil and Frikshen, Khard taking the time to read his notes even though they were simply the thoughts that his notebook had pulled from his mind.

  “I have my first guess,” Khard said, breaking the silence.

  Lochlan turned towards the older Agent. “Okay. What is it?”

  “I think it was O-Rell’s robot operation, and that he was trying to make some money on the side, but he was being cheap with his parts and bought irradiated metal.”

  “So why run? Why not just make up a lie to his team?”

  “Because O-Rell never wanted to be a Cape anyway. He saw his opportunity to take off and he took it.”

  “Hm…” Lochlan said, letting the information process in his mind. “The three of them seem close, though. Frikshen and Gil could hardly hold back their tears, and their surprise at him being alive appeared very real. Gil’s heartrate rose significantly.”

  “Sometimes, people make the best of a situation until they think they no longer have to. That’s when you see their true colors.” Khard’s eyebrows raised as he finished his statement, his face adding a bit of finality to his words.

  Lochlan considered Khard’s hypothesis a bit more. It made sense to him–Frikshen and Gil didn’t seem like they were lying about the robots. They came off like two worried teammates, relieved and surprised to see O-Rell still alive in the picture.

  “Wait,” Lochlan said. “What about O-Rell’s transformation? How do you explain that? Why does O-Rell look so radically different?”

  “I think, perhaps, O-Rell’s gene activated again, causing a stronger mutation. I think the deformities are due to a mixture of the radiation in his body and his gene activating twice.”

  “Has that happened before?”

  “Not to my knowledge, no. But it ties my guess together.”

  “And you think it could have happened that way?”

  “I’ve definitely seen weirder things. I was a Cape for a long time, Lochlan. There’s stuff that makes it back in your report that is never talked about. I’m not just talking about the Top-Secret findings, either, or things that might harm global security. I mean there’s been stuff that there’s no rhyme or reason for keeping secret, but ends up that way because nobody talks about it. Could be someone else’s Ch05En gene activated a second time before O-Rell and we just never heard about it.”

  “Those kinds of things… don’t get talked about? Why would anyone keep that a secret?”

  “Well, you know I used to teach at the GHS academy, right? When I decided it was finally time for me to leave, the man who became my replacement, Hunter, was someone I had absolute faith in. Hunter was someone I had helped to train when he became a Cape; I gave him his moniker when that was still the way things went. Hunter had wanted to start teaching with Ripsaw, who he had come up with at the academy and been on a team with for many years. The two of them were some of the best fighters I’d ever seen, even back when they were only training. I’m pretty sure Ripsaw was one of the best ever born, actually. Personally, I think no matter what a Cape’s power is or isn’t, they need to know how
to fight to do a good job.

  “Anyway, the night Ripsaw was recruited, he faced off against a crazed young man wielding a knife that seemed to be impossibly sharp. In Ripsaw’s recounting, and the Field Agent’s report, the young man’s eyes glowed purple via luminescent contacts. Like I said, Ripsaw was probably one of the best fighters in the world even before being trained, and he made short work of the kid with the knife. But once the threat had ended, the kid’s contacts, apparently, just turned themselves off. Neat trick, right? I mean, what kinds of contacts even do that? Who makes them? But nobody asks those questions. And if you read the report, it’s easy to see that what really happened was that the kid was no longer holding the knife, and the moment he didn’t have it anymore, that’s when his eyes went back to normal. Now, if you were to do a Boolean keyword search through the Field Agent report database for different combinations of those terms: glowing eyes, sharp knife, crazed, you’re going to find similar happenings across numerous dates leading up to that particular evening. Different kids each time, but the same basic story.”