by Riker Kane
The guys didn’t look much different from one another. Not that it mattered. I’d seen their types before. Assholes who were constantly looking for every moment to prove how tough they were. And from the smirk on the woman’s lips, she wanted to see it, too.
“Listen,” I said as I put my hands up. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But something is going on.”
“Something’s going on, all right,” one of the punks said. “Why don’t you go back in the club? Spend some money and get yourself a lap dance. Mind your own business.”
“Considering how much this woman over here is following me, I’d say this is my business—”
“Screw this!” The other man suddenly moved toward me.
When you spent most of your time in the gym, you got used to guys coming at you. Every punch. Every kick. The human body could only move a certain way. The only difference was speed. And that came from training.
This guy didn’t have any.
I moved out of the way from his punch and hammered him in the stomach, crumpling him to the floor. He wrapped his hands around his gut as he wheezed to try and catch his breath.
I quickly turned my attention to the other man, who tried to follow-up. They looked the same. They threw the same, predictable punch. I repeated what I just did a second ago. And now they were both on the ground the same, rolling around in pain and gasping for air.
The woman stepped over their writhing bodies and moved right in front of me.
She turned her head up and looked right at me. A couple of emerald green eyes shimmered underneath the moonlight. Her skin was fair, unblemished and youthful. She had a thin face with chiseled cheekbones and a thin nose, but she wasn’t gaunt. I figured she was in her early twenties or so. Young but with a certain maturity about her. Like a girl who grew up too fast.
Up close, she seemed a lot slimmer with how slender her arms were. Her shirt was loose though, so it was hard to tell just how thin she was.
She crossed her arms then looked down at the poor saps still recovering. “Not bad. You are Enzo Drake.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. I already knew something was up. Hearing my name just confirmed it.
“Who are you?” I said. “What do you want?”
She reached into her pocket then held out a business card to me. But there was no name or information on it. Just a phone number.
“I’m Jade. Call me.”
I shook my head, fighting back a smile at how absurd the situation was. “Girls don’t usually give me a card when they give me their number. I could just type it into my phone.” I looked down at the guys. “But considering you’ve been stalking me, I don’t think there’s any chance I’ll actually call you—”
“It’s not what you think. It’s about your father.”
The smile left my face. Every thought I had about what I thought she might’ve wanted left me. And considering how she wasn’t smiling either, she wasn’t joking. Or maybe it was just a really bad joke.
“Things are still being set up,” she said. “But they should be ready in the morning. Call me then.”
She spun around on her heels and began walking down the alley. Her heels clicked against the pavement in the silence of the night.
“You don’t really expect me to call you, do you?” I yelled out.
“I do expect it, Enzo,” she called back without missing a step.
I watched her move to the end of the alley then turn around the corner. I was too confused by everything that happened to move.
A strange woman was following me. And now I was standing in the middle of the alley with a card in my hand that had that same strange woman’s number.
My life wasn’t very interesting. Weird nights like this made me realize how much I took that shit for granted.
3: The Truth
When outsiders thought of Los Angeles, they always thought about the bright lights and the big city. They imagined all of the movie stars walking down the streets of Hollywood and all the rock stars holding concerts at all of the arenas. But it was a big city, which meant most of it wasn’t as glamorous as it was on television.
It was early in the morning when I found myself in one of the most common parts of the city. Down south, right along the coast, the industrious people were hard at work. Longshoremen worked on the docks, loading and unloading the dozens of freighters all lined up. The countless ships all billowed with smoke as the men and women worked to deal with all of the cargo. It was a sunny day for relaxing but for the dockworkers, that made it even easier to work up a sweat.
Along with all of the ships on the docks, there were all of the warehouses. Massive storage facilities took up acres of land to the point you could get lost if you wanted to.
“What the hell am I doing?” I muttered to myself as I read the numbers on the warehouses, trying to find my destination.
I woke up early that morning despite not getting a good night’s sleep. I thought I could sleep off the strange night I had and forget about everything that happened but as soon as I regained consciousness, it all came back to me faster than I could forget about it.
The number on the woman’s card had been etched into my thoughts. I should’ve torn it in half and tossed it into the wind. But something was compelling me to make another bad decision. Some bad judgment eating away at my brain. All of a sudden I was on the docks, searching for something without knowing what the hell it was.
“Dock P. Warehouse 1151.”
I double-checked the text message ‘Jade’ sent me to make sure I was heading in the right direction. In the distance, I heard the horns of more ships coming into the docks but there wasn’t another person near me. I turned the corner, following the trail of numbers until I finally made it to my destination.
It was a plain-looking storage facility. A warehouse no bigger than my apartment. There was what looked like a two-car garage door with another smaller door right next to it. It didn’t look much different from the dozens of warehouses along the row but the numbers matched what I was looking for.
I looked down at my phone and sent a text. A few seconds later, the message was put on read and the door opened up.
Jade. The dark-haired woman stepped out in front of me. Underneath the sunlight, she looked a lot younger than I remembered. Same outfit from last night. A small white top with thin straps draped over her bony shoulders but a little tighter than I remembered. Her arms were just as thin. I looked down and noticed how slim her torso was, which led down to a pair of blue jeans tucked into a pair of black riding boots.
When I shifted my eyes back up to her face, I saw just how pale her skin was underneath the sunlight. Despite the subtle smile on her lips, there was something in her eyes. It was like she was hiding something. Then again, that was pretty obvious from how much she was following me.
“Glad you could make it out, Enzo. Lemme show you inside—”
“Hold on a second.” I put my hands up. “You don’t expect me to just walk into this warehouse without telling me what this is all about, do you?”
She took a step toward me without taking those green eyes of hers off me. Her smile left her. “You know what this is about. It’s about your—”
“That’s not good enough. For all I know, you could be setting me up. The same way he was set up.”
“Your father wasn’t set up. And the one person who can prove it to you is inside.”
Jade moved next to the door and opened it up. I peeked inside but couldn’t see much.
This was a bad idea. The more I thought about it, the louder the voice in my head was telling me to just walk away. But there was something else, too. A damn curiosity along with my bad judgment that wouldn’t go away no matter how much I tried to drown it out.
“I’m not up to anything,” she said, her voice stern but sincere. “I won’t make you do anything either. You can walk away if you want.”
“That reverse psychology bullshit won’t work on me.”
�
�Hmm…” She crossed her arms, her whole petite frame shaking as she chuckled. “Once you have all the facts, you can make the decision for yourself. But it wouldn’t be fair to yourself if you don’t know the facts to begin with.”
Jade stepped aside and held her hand to the opening. I stared at the doorway then looked around like it was the last time I was ever gonna see Newmire. I stopped thinking too hard about it and walked through the door.
Jade followed behind me and clicked it closed but I was too distracted by what I saw. The spacious warehouse was bigger than my entire apartment. The lights were bright but with a dull, yellowish tint. There was something along the walls. Equipment. Machinery. Cars. I couldn’t tell what they were exactly because they were all covered in tarps. The only thing that wasn’t covered was a small workbench off to one side of the warehouse room. Someone was hunched over it.
I couldn’t see them very well. Someone in a white lab coat.
“Dr. Redgrave,” Jade said.
The figure at the workbench sat up straight then spun around in their seat.
It was an older man. Probably in his sixties or seventies. Skin wrinkled and covered in liver spots. Head bald outside of a few wispy white strands. Underneath his lab coat, he appeared frail enough for his shirt to be loose. Even the way his slacks bunched over his sneakers made it look like he was shrinking.
His eyes were already narrowed from how much his sagging cheeks made them look closed. But when the older man got up to step toward me, he squinted even more. The guy looked harmless but I wasn’t about to let my guard down.
He kept inching forward, his head slowly bowing up and down. “Yes… You are Oliver’s son.” He moved right in front of me, a soft smile on his lips. “I can see it in your eyes. You look just like him.”
“I look like my father. Is that so weird?”
The old man chuckled. “You sound just like him, too. No, it’s not strange that a son would resemble his father. I suppose I’m more relieved you’re truly standing here in front of me. I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment, Enzo. I didn’t think it would ever happen.”
I looked over at Jade, who was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. “If you wanted me to visit this old man, you didn’t have to spend the whole day stalking me.”
“I had to make sure you were the right Enzo Drake,” she said.
“Are there a lot of Enzo Drake’s to confuse me with?”
“It’s not only that. I had to see if you were… capable. If you were actually a guy who knew how to fight.”
“Capable?” I thought about it for a moment. The longer I stared at her, the more it dawned on me. “Those two guys in the alley… You wanted me to beat them up. To see if I could handle myself.”
She nodded. “Don’t worry. I’m from Newmire, too. Those punks hanging outside the Pussycat Club aren’t exactly angels. They got what they deserved.”
The answers I was getting were only leading to more questions. I turned back to the old man standing a few feet away from me.
“And what do you have to do with all this?” I asked.
“My name is Dr. Benjamin Redgrave. I work with the Legion Omega Defense… worked with the Legion, I should say now. I’m not a part of anything official now. Tell me, Enzo. What do you know about what happened to your father?”
My father. Nothing made me stop and think like bringing him up. It didn’t matter how long I thought though, because there was no way to put it into words.
“My father was in the Legion. Worked his way up all the way to Prime, at least that’s what he told me. Then… he was just gone. Some LOD official comes to my grandma’s house one day to give her the news. Then she tells me I’m never gonna see him again. They don’t tell either of us why because it’s classified. Tried looking into it when I got older but it’s like he never existed. My father…” I swallowed to clear my throat. “My dad’s dead. The only Omega who’s dead and it’s not even on record. Lucky him…”
I clenched my jaw to keep my composure. “Is that why you brought me here? Bring back old memories I don’t wanna think about?”
The old man didn’t seem threatened though. He just kept smiling, his eyes nearly closed as he stared back at me. His lips started to quiver as he spoke. “What if I told you your father was still alive?”
I thought I misheard him. He didn’t say what I thought he did. He couldn’t have. It wouldn’t have made any sense.
The old man must’ve sensed my confusion. He put his hands behind his back as he began pacing back and forth in front of me.
“Everybody knows why the Legion was established,” he said. “After the First Event, we were working to figure out how to deal with the Shadows. I was among the scientists trying to put a permanent end to Pandora. I hypothesized by going as deep into Pandora as we could, we could find the ones responsible for the attacks. Destroy the head and the rest of the body will fall was my belief. We classified it as the Slayer Project. I was given the green light to lead the project.
“Pandora is made up of different dimensions. The LOD sends Omegas into the nearest dimensions to deal with the closest threats. I began the project by taking readings of the deepest dimensions I could. The deeper I got, the greater the Mana density powering those dimensions became. But it wasn’t just the power of the Mana. The Mana itself became unstable. The dimensions were like nothing I could explain.
“Have you ever wondered why the threat of Pandora still exists? Why after forty years, even the highest-level Prime Omegas still aren’t enough to defeat even the most powerful threats?”
“The LOD has been around a long time,” I said. “I guess it’s a little strange they haven’t found a way to shut down Pandora for good.”
“It’s because the deepest dimensions of Pandora are unstable as I suggested. We dubbed the deepest dimension on record Anarchy. Even the greatest Primes with the highest Mana levels would succumb in Anarchy.”
He paused for a moment, his eyes focused on the ground. I could practically see the gears churning around in his head. His throat bobbed up and down with a hard swallow before he continued.
“Oliver… Your father… He was the bravest Omega I ever knew. He knew all of the risks about venturing to Anarchy. But he decided to go through with it anyway. He said if there were a chance to end this war so that nobody would ever have to fight again, he would take it.
“So he ventured into Pandora by himself. He traveled through dimension after dimension to get as close to Anarchy as he could. The man was so determined, I started to believe he would actually do what he set out to do.”
Redgrave stopped again. Even though his eyes were squinted, it was easy to tell they were beginning to glaze over. He didn’t say anything, his clenched jaw shifting.
“What happened?” I said.
“We… I…” He exhaled a deep breath through his nose. “…I was monitoring his signal. His vital signs. Omegas wear communicators, so we can see everything. Their combat data. Their stats. We know exactly what condition they’re in. If they’re in trouble, we can pull them out if their gear doesn’t do it for them.”
“What happened?” I repeated.
Redgrave looked up at me and shook his head. “Your father… He just vanished. His vitals didn’t drop. There was just… no reading.”
I looked away from him and put my hands on my hips. For a split-second, I thought about getting pissed. All that and he didn’t know what happened. Couldn’t get mad at an old man though.
I quickly regained my composure. I laughed at how ludicrous this whole story was.
“All right,” I said. “My father’s gone. Just like he’s always been. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know—”
“Your father is not gone. He’s not dead either. I told you Anarchy was unstable. There’s a chance your father is still there.”
“What difference does it make?” I scoffed. “It’s been nearly twenty years since then. If he wasn’t dead then, he’s d
ead now. He couldn’t survive for that long.”
I didn’t wanna believe him but Redgrave wouldn’t let it go. “I can’t explain what Anarchy is. It’s not merely a place. It’s a plane. An existence of energy. I’ve been studying for years, trying to figure out what happened. And now I have the answers. I know why I stopped getting his readings. Your father was broken down to his essence. Turned into pure energy, existing in Pandora.”
“So he’s not dead. Now he’s just turned into energy. That doesn’t make a difference.”
“Don’t you see what he’s saying?” Jade suddenly spoke up and walked over to me. “Your father still exists.”
“As energy. What good does that do?”
“Why do you think an Omega never dies permanently? How come they talk about how no soldier has ever been lost despite the brutal monsters they face? Because they have the technology to recompose them.”
I heard her right. She was telling me everything I wanted to hear. And a part of me was stupid enough to think it made some sense.
I took a step back from both of them, shaking my head. It’s been too damn long and now all of a sudden they were trying to hand me a miracle.
“If he’s still there, why didn’t you go after him?” I said.
“I regret everything that happened to Oliver,” Redgrave said. “After he was lost, the Slayer Project was shut down. I protested but they refused to reinstate it. So I left. I spent all of this time… seventeen years to try and figure out what happened. I want to fix my mistake. And I can’t think of anyone better to help me fix it than the one man who was most affected by it.”
His story was strange but it made some sense. I stayed staring at the ground. “Lemme get this straight. You want me to head into Pandora, go all the way to Anarchy, find my father, and bring him back. Me. Not an Omega. Just a regular civilian. Am I getting this right?”
“We have the means to do it. All we need is someone willing.”
I looked around at all of the cloths covering everything in the warehouse. “I guess that explains all of the equipment…”
