by Newbiel
"Listen prosecutor…" Agent Sarland started to say before he was abruptly cut short by Karine.
"No, you are going to listen to me. My son and his bodyguards will keep themselves available to assist in your investigation. In the meantime, after today's tragic event, he will go back home with me. When you want to see my son, you will call me to arrange a meeting. If you just try to get to my son without me present, I will remember that you tried to take away a minor without his guardian or a state appointed tutor present and I assure you that your next job will be a security agent in a mall in another state. Do we understand each other?" She asked in a chilling voice.
Properly chastised, he could only nod in front of her. He got busted in the candy jar and now he could only take it without saying anything. It was already good that she was not pressing charges as it was in her right to do so.
"Good, come with me Nathaniel. Jean and Amal you are coming too."
"What about the two bodyguards?" Williams asked.
"They are clearly injured, the only place that they need to be right now is a hospital, not an interrogation room. The only reason they are not by now is because they are stubborn idiots with a sense of duty. I already have an ambulance waiting for them outside. Well, it was a pleasure gentlemen, I hope we will meet again in the future." She smiled, leaving with her head held high.
The three FBI agents in the room could only watch her leave, they were clearly not looking forward to meeting her again. It was not the first time and not the last that Karine Lyndon stormed her way into law enforcement officials.
Chapter 70: :
Once they had put the two bodyguards in the ambulance, Nathaniel was led by his mother away from the huge mass of reporters in front of the building and where she had parked her car. He did not have the time to enter it when he was fiercely hugged by his crying mother. He embraced her with just as much force. Although he was confident in his capacity to succeed tonight it was not easy or without risk by a longshot.
"My baby! I'm so glad that you are alright!" She cried.
"I'm glad to be alright too." He said smiling.
He kept hugging her until her tears finally dried out. His eyes were moist too but he was still smiling like an idiot. It feels good to be loved.
"How did you know that I was there?"
"The police captain. He saw your name and called me. That reminds me. You are grounded."
"Euh what? Why?" Nathaniel was dumbfounded by the abrupt change of topic.
"Your grandfather also called. I don't know how, but you knew that something was going to happen tonight, that's why you requested the help of Amal and Jean. Hence, you are grounded."
"But I have never been grounded! For how long?" He said indignantly.
"Yes, we have been too kind to you. For at least a week, we will see after that."
"But mom!"
"Don't 'Mom' me! Your case will be evaluated again next week."
"Alright prosecutor." He knew better than to try to argue against his mother in a case like this.
He could only smile bitterly. He had just fought against assassins and now he was being grounded. It was a situation so weird that he wanted to laugh, he didn't though because it could be misinterpreted. If his mother thought that he was mocking her, she would ground him for a month at least.
"Come on, your mother is waiting for us, probably sick with worry. Prepare yourself to get an earful."
He thought he was prepared but once he came home and was yelled at for ten minutes straight, he realized he was not. This was the first time that he saw his mom so worked up.
"Do you know how horrible it was! I was watching the news, watching injured people on stretchers or in body bags thinking it could be you! You do not realize what it was like!"
"I'm sorry mom! I had to act!"
"No baby, that's the thing! You could have warned the police! This is their job, not yours!"
"Yes and they would have put a patrol in front of the building. Seeing this the assassin would have waited and attacked when they had left. Or worse, they would have killed them in their patrol car and then attacked! I was uniquely qualified to intervene and we managed to reduce the life cost of what happened tonight. With Jean, Amal and myself we saved lives, we saved my friend and her family lives at least. I don't have that many friends to begin with, I wanted to keep the few that I have safe!" He finally yelled back, stopping the rant of his mother.
Looking at her wife, Mary seemed to calm down a little. It was true that Nathaniel never had any friends when he was younger and that was always a cause of worry for them. They would have prefered he made friends with people who were not on some assassins hit list but well, it was still a step in the right direction.
"Uniquely qualified?" Karine picked up after not saying anything until this point. "Baby, we were okay with you to keep your secrets but after tonight this is not on the table anymore. We need to know everything, we can't continue like this."
"Are you sure? Mom?" He asked, looking at Mary.
"Yes, we talked about it. We need to know sweetie."
"Alright." He sighed sadly. "Phone on the table please." He asked, going to the modem and turning off the internet and landline of the whole apartment. Once back, he began dismantling both of their phones.
"Ok, I don't know how to start delicately so I will say it right of the batch. I was never in a coma."
"What?" "Excuse me!?" They both shout at the same time, clearly not expecting this.
"After the accident I did not fall into a coma. I was not sleeping, I was wide awake. I think my soul was damaged and I was trapped inside my own body." He explained, looking at both of them anxiously.
"Nathaniel if it's a joke, this is not funny." Karine said with an edge in her voice.
"He's not joking around, look at him. Baby maybe it was just your imagination or a bad dream?" Mary speculated.
"No mom, it was not a dream. I was trapped in complete darkness for four years. That was very real. Just listen to me please, let me explain."
Exchanging a glance, they seem to have a silent discussion between them before looking at him again and nodding.
"I was trapped and despite trying my best I could not get out of it. To be honest, I was starting to lose hope. That's when my prison started to crumble and I managed to break free, but then I saw that there was a crimson soul who I thought wanted to take over my body. We ended up talking. I found out that his name was Marc, he had just died and did not know where he was or why he was there. After we talked, he decided that he wanted to go on with his life but before he left, he gave me a gift. All of his memories, all of what he knew in his life got imprinted inside my mind. It was only after we sort of merged that I managed to wake up. I know it's crazy but it's what happened. I swear it is true." He pleaded.
Mary was looking at him as if he was sick while Karine had a troubled look on her face.
"Listen baby, maybe it seems real to you but that was something coming from the accident. We should go see some doctor."
"I'm not sick mom, this is real." He said with a pained expression.
"I believe you sweetie." Karine said, surprising both of them who looked at her mouth agape.
"You do?" Nathaniel asked hopefully.
"Really Karine? This is crazy!"
"The night that Nathaniel came back to us, I had a dream, did you forget? I was going to tell you about it when the doctor called us and after that it slipped my mind. In that dream, I saw Nathaniel who had a white halo around him with an oppressing crimson ball beside him. The two are too similar to what Nathaniel just told us to not be connected without even talking about the timing of it all."
Hearing that, Nathaniel was shocked. He never thought that it was possible for his mother to see this encounter. It seemed that he still had a lot to learn about that weird, unmaterial place. He had not yet found a name for it and was trying very hard to not think about that part of him as it was kind of disturbing. Mary was not saying an
ything so far and was in deep thought, looking at her wife so he decided to go on.
"Marc was forty years old and a SEAL commando before being recruited by the CIA. Once he had finished his training, the CIA destroyed all records of him being born and started using him as a killer for the organisation. And all of his training, all of what he did in his life was transferred to me. Look."
Getting up, he took the gun that his mother had in her purse. It was a Walther PPS M2 compact gun. It was a good handgun easy to take around and hide on oneself. It was also really accurate but lacked a little punching power. Putting the gun on the table, Nathaniel began to disassemble it and reassemble it quickly. It was done so skillfully that it gave the impression that he did it all of his life, which was kind of true. His two mothers were watching him do it with awed expressions on their faces.
Chapter 71: :
"This is incredible." Mary said, still awed.
"It really is." Karine agreed.
"There is more. Since then I also have that energy who seems to stir inside of me. I can run thirty miles and still feel fresh. I'm also stronger and faster than almost everybody. I can also heal fast, faster than I should be able to. It's like my whole body is buffed."
"Nathaniel, what you are saying is not possible." Mary said doubtfully.
"This whole situation is not possible and we are still here love. We knew from the get go that there was no logical explanation for what was happening with our son." Karine answered.
Looking at the doubtful expression on his mother's face, Nathaniel could only sigh. He then rose and started striping, taking off his sweater and T-shirt, showing his impressive 6 pack. His mothers were not understanding why he was doing that until they saw that Nathaniel's chest was sporting some impressive bruises.
"What happened?��� Mary cried, alarmed to see her son hurt like that.
"I got in close combat with one of the attackers, these guys were punching hard. Now see for yourself mom."
Nathaniel then began to gather his soul's power on his chest where he had been hit. He had become quite handy at doing it after getting injured repeatedly when doing parkour or when he was in rehab. At first, he needed five minutes to succeed in harnessing his soul to the part of his wound but now he only needed a few seconds. In front of the very eyes of his mothers, the purple bruises started to turn red and a few seconds later came back to unblemished pink.
Looking at the now perfectly healthy chest of theirs son, Karine and Mary were awestruck. What they had just witnessed was not supposed to exist in this world. Without saying anything, the two of them got up and started patting their son's chest. Nathaniel was watching them trying to figure out if it was real until he cleared his throat.
"Well, can you stop please? It's starting to get kind of weird." He laughed awkwardly.
Realizing what they were doing, they immediately stopped with a little smile. Even if what they had just seen and learned was mind blowing, their son was always shy and that didn't seem to have changed after his multiple transformations. They were already quite surprised to see that he was ripped, knowing he had always been kind of geeky when he was younger. They were aware of his morning run of course but his 6 pack showed that he was working out hard.
"Nobody else must know about this." Karine asserted once she came back to her senses.
"Yes, I understand now why you insist on keeping it a secret. If someone in the government were to know about it, they would do their utmost to study you or kill you." Mary said fearfully.
"Mom, I'm aware of almost a hundred classified missions carried out by the CIA in the last two decades. Each one enough already to warrant having a kill order issued against me. Trust me, I know better than anyone that I must keep quiet about this."
"Is it hard? To have the memories of so much killing in your head?"
"Yeah kind of. I'm now a conundrum. I'm still me with my sixteen years old body but I have more than five decades of life experiences in my head. In some aspects, I'm even older than grandpa. I'm not anymore the Nathaniel that you knew when I was twelve but I'm not Marc either, I'm becoming a mix of the two, trying to forge my own path with all that is happening around me."
"This is why you are meditating that much?" Mary understood.
"Yes, Meditation is helping me to fuse Marc's memories with mine but in general, it helps me understand myself better." Nathaniel explained.
Even today, he was still dedicating one hour each day to meditation. It was a huge help in understanding his inner self better and to notice things that he missed on some of Marcs souvenirs and generally about his day. He was starting to think that meditating had become essential in his life.
"Now I understand why you became more orderly and organized. We should thank military training for that." Karine said with a chuckle.
"I was always orderly and organized!" Nathaniel said indignantly.
"Do I have to remind you of the time when I found one of your school books in the washer?" Mary laughed.
"I have still no idea how it ended up there." Nathaniel grumbled in a half-voiced whisper.
"There was also the time he misplaced his shoes and we did not find them anywhere until three months after when we sold that horrible cabinet and they were on top of it."
"There was also the pineapple incident."
"Oh my god, I almost forget about that!" Mary howled in laughter.
"Alright! Okay I was maybe NOT the most organized kid in the world." He shouted, putting his hands up in a sign of surrender.
"I still have one question I want to ask. Why you? Why did Marc's soul come to you of all people?" Karine asked calmly once again.
"I looked into it but with Marc's record all deleted it was not that easy. So far, I found out that he and I only share one thing. We were both born December first at 16:24 albeit in different years. It is too specific to be a coincidence."
"You really think this is the reason?"
"I can't be sure, I'm not really an expert in these kinds of things. I don't think an expert even exists to explain reincarnation and soul power on this planet. That's one of the reasons I did not want to tell you about it. I'm not sure of anything at this point."
"We can understand now why you wanted to keep it a secret don't worry sweetie but we still have a hard question to ask. Do we tell your grandparents?" Mary asked with conflicted emotions.
"No, not yet at least. I don't want to worry them with it and we know how grandpa is. He will try to take steps to protect us. Steps that could send some alarm to the wrong people." He finally gave his opinion after thinking about it for a while.
"You are right about that, that really sounds like something he would do." Mary smiled sadly.
"I wanted to know something sweetie. Why did you refuse to go to the FBI building? Even if the agent in charge was out of line, you could have shown some willingness to help. That does not sound like you." She asked with one eyebrow raised.
"I could not risk having a gunpowder test be ordered on me." He sighed.
"Why could you not…." She started to ask before realizing why. "You used a gun tonight?"
"Yes, I did not have a choice. These guys were some bad ass killers. They killed everyone they met, I had to act."
"Did you have to kill?" Mary asked.
"Yes, I had to. They were too strong and too highly trained, if not for me they would have slaughtered civilians and cops."
"Are you alright sweetie?" Karine asked worriedly.
"I… I really don't know. At the moment, I just acted by instinct and training but now I have these confusing feelings in my head." He said, his voice cracking with emotions.
The next instant he was fiercely hugged by his two mothers and the emotions that he held until that moment finally started to spill out in the form of tears.
Chapter 72: :
New York, Lyndon Penthouse. 11/10/2012. 20:45.
The next day Nathaniel could be found sitting on the floor in the center of his room. He wa
s in a deep meditative state, his body posture rigid and his breathing shallow. At that moment he was looking like a statue, regal and unmoving. In this state, he could feel nothing and feel everything, he could see each of his emotions without feeling them. In that state, he could not be harmed in any way.
After last night's event he got hit with so many emotions that they had threatened to overwhelm him. There was guilt for having killed people, anger for feeling the guilt in the first place because the guys that he had killed deserved it. After that he had felt fear. Fear to be rejected by his mother after knowing what he had done and what he really was. He had expected to be cast out but he was gravely mistaken.
His mother had taken care of him, hugged him and cried with him. He had been wrong and had underestimated the faith and love that they had for him. It was an exhilarating feeling to feel loved and accepted for being you. Finally telling them the truth was also liberating, it was getting increasingly hard to hide that part of him and the only people in the world he did not want to lie to were his family.
His meditation was suddenly interrupted by his phone ringing. Without even opening his eyes, he took his phone that he had left next to him on the carpet and accepted the call.
"Yes?"
"Nathaniel? Where are you?' Asked the enchanting voice of Madison.
It was at this moment that Nathaniel remembered that there was a party tonight in her sorority house and that Madison had invited him.
"I'm sorry Madison, I did not remember it was tonight.!" He apologized.
"Oh it's okay, are you still coming?"
"Sorry but no. I'm not really in a mood to party right now. I think I'm gonna stay home."
"Is everything alright?" She asked in concern.
"Yes, don't worry about it. I hate to leave you hanging like that but I'm really not in a mood to see a lot of people right now. I will make it up to you alright?"
